


With My Life

by Ninjaninaiii



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: 50k? 70? 100k?, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Asexual Relationship, Case Fic, Families of Choice, Fix-It, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Madeleine Era, Minor Joly/Bossuet Laigle/Musichetta, Non-Binary Jehan, Post-Canon, Self Harm, Transgender Enjolras, Vampire Hunters, What started as a crack-y Twilight AU is now a serious fic, honestly not sure how long this will be, minor jehan / montparnasse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-09-12 09:26:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9065812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninjaninaiii/pseuds/Ninjaninaiii
Summary: What a sight he must be for Valjean, for any of the schoolchildren still fighting outside: a human spy, raw around the throat from the noose he’d been near-hung by, being bottle-fed by a criminal potentially hundreds, if not thousands of years older than he. An attempt at equal weighting between the three primary pairings. ExR / BxF begins ch.4.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [graeliwil](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=graeliwil).



“Here. Drink this.” Javert could not lift his head up enough to see what was being offered to him, his sore neck and tired body too tired to support even the simplest movements. Not that he would be able to see in the darkness of the room anyway; packed away in the corner opposite the dead Malouf’s body, the dawning day’s sunlight could barely reach them. 

Whatever it was, Javert was not about to accept it from this… beast. He would prefer dehydration, death, to accepting pity from Jean Valjean.

What he got instead was a gruff “don’t be a fool, Javert,” and the lip of the glass bottle pressed against his parched own. “Please drink, or you shall die.” Javert might have been surprised about the amount of emotion in the voice above him, but perhaps the convict did not want to kill a man on the brink of death. Perhaps Valjean wanted to slay the slayer in his prime.

Either way, Javert drank: an almost involuntary action, his body desperate enough to fight his damning mind. He couldn’t handle more than a couple of gulps, a wetting of the tongue more than a drink, but still he choked, spitting out some of the liquid.

Valjean sighed and Javert couldn’t help but frown, needing not to look weak, especially now. “I have tasted too much of my own blood tonight,” Javert excused, licking his lips as if he could still feel blood on them. “All I can taste is salt and iron.” Javert felt Valjean shift underneath him (the sheer embarrassment of being propped up by the man was enough in itself.) 

“Drink,” was all the man said, and Javert could admit to himself that he was starting to feel better for doing so. He could swallow now without the grating sensation he’d had to suffer through since his capture, and his eyes were not quite as sandpaper-dry. Valjean brought the bottle up again and Javert drank more readily, though the bloody taste still permeated. 

He swallowed in quick gulps, adjusting to the taste and finding it not as bad as it had been that first sip. Wine, his mind supplied, what with the sudden wooziness coming over him. He hadn’t eaten for days through the insurrection, nor had he been given water, nor indeed, was he partial to drink from the outset. He disliked the taste of wine, the clouding of the mind, the actions it made too many respectable people commit, all in addition to the price, an expenditure he would rather spend on ink or bread.

Javert knew that alcohol on an empty stomach proved to make for horrible nights, but despite the light-headedness, the clawing of hunger had begun to dissipate, as if he’d gorged himself on a full meal.

What a sight he must be for Valjean, for any of the schoolchildren still fighting outside: a human spy, raw around the throat from the noose he’d been near-hung by, being bottle-fed by a criminal potentially hundreds, if not thousands of years older than he. The criminal Javert had been chasing since youth. He finally had the man in his grasp, and here he was being cradled by the fiend.

A fiend. A monster. Vampire. Javert didn’t know where his weapons were, but he assumed the children had taken them away, perhaps burned the hidden stakes, melted the crucifixes, thrown his vials of holy water down the sewers.

A sudden, ridiculous panic came over him. He would laugh at himself, were he not currently so pathetically weak. While itemising the possessions he had had on him during his capture, he had thought about the rosary he had been given over a decade ago by a man he’d thought of as a benefactor. He had carried the thing about his person partially as a reminder that he could not trust anyone but himself, and partially because he could not bear to throw it away.

Javert and Monsieur Madeleine had spent four years bonding, and though Javert knew better than to covet the memories, he allowed himself the deathbed pleasure of letting himself reminisce. The keepsake was all he had had from a time he had considered himself genuinely content. Happy, almost.

Of course, he’d stopped relying on crucifixes after he had discovered Valjean was apparently immune to the things, (who, after all, would have looked for a vampire in a factory producing the religious beads,) and yet, here he was. More desolate now than he had been before finding the string of jet beads missing.

His distress must have shown—Valjean was applying a light pressure to one of his shoulders in order to steady him, still applying the damned bottle to his lips, making a small shushing sound as if Javert were a babe to be comforted.

Javert could feel his strength coming back to him and Valjean was having to apply stronger and stronger force to stop Javert from sitting up, from moving around too much to search himself for the missing gift. 

“Javert, stop. What is it you’re looking for?” At least the man had put the bottle down, Javert thought with slight triumph. He delved through his trouser pockets, but he found them emptied, nothing but lint residing in the cheap fabric. Javert grunted, falling back down to his previous position, finding no use in sitting up anymore.

Well, whatever. When the boys died, he would search through their belongings and take the rosary back. That was if, of course, Valjean did not kill him first. Javert was alive and kicking now, that was for sure, much less the re-animated corpse he had felt like before. And yet Javert did not feel fear at the thought. What was there to fear? He had long since accepted death. What was different about dying to this hand than dying to any other?

Javert had led a pious life. He had obeyed the law, he had prayed, he had not sinned. If he were to die now, as a human in this festering city of creatures, perhaps God would accept him into His garden. And, well, what would the alternative be but yet another challenge to him? Life was hell, the afterlife might as well be too. He had suffered much at the hands of humans and earth-bound monsters alike; what were demons after these?

Javert startled a little at the pressure of a thumb on his neck, where he knew his jugular lay beneath the skin. “How right that you would bleed me dry, right to the end,” Javert scoffed, tilting his head away so as to lay his neck all the more bare.

At his movement, Valjean removed his hand and remained quiet, a curious gesture that made Javert open his eyes to search for Valjean’s expression. When he found it, it read of a kind of regret, a guilt that could only be felt  _ after  _ one has committed a deed.

It was the look not of a gammin caught with a pilfered apple, or of a spooked grisette taking shelter in an alley, but the look of a man who has killed his wife in a bout of rage, and now kneels, in her blood, in shock. Something leapt in Javert’s stomach, nearly at the same moment his brain attempted to fit the puzzle pieces together. 

Javert tilted his head to where the bottle from which he had been fed lay discarded to one side of them on the dirty floor. It showed the drips of the dark red liquid it contained. Javert’s eyes trailed from bottle to Valjean’s hands, to his wrists, where a small, now-healing cut had been. It was almost curious the calm Javert felt as his own hand reached up to touch the spot on his neck Valjean had pressed against only moments before, to find two ridged puncture marks, a couple of centimetres apart.

He attempted to recollect what had happened in the last hour. He could remember waking to the sound of debating outside, had overheard the leader of the rebels attempting to convince some of the young men to leave, to retire to their families back at home. Then a silence, or a temporary loss of consciousness, and then Valjean had been there. Initially, Javert had assumed the phantom face a cruel hallucination, but then the ghost had cut the rope around his neck and- and perhaps another blackout? The next he knew he had been drinking from the bottle, head on Valjean’s lap.

A cool, dejected hatred descended upon him. Javert sat up, ignoring the queasy sensation in his stomach, stood despite the wobble in his legs and the sound of Valjean’s objections, and went outside via the café’s back entrance, where he promptly threw up.

The dimness of the alley behind the abandoned café was clearing, like he was rubbing sleep from his eyes. He had always had bad eyesight, never having been able to afford spectacles, not when they were so easy to break, but now it seemed like things were focusing more than they ever could. The lines of the walls were becoming so sharp he could make out the whorls of the wood, the grit of the bricks. He turned and turned, and he could see.

Then, the smell of acid, of blood, it threatened to clog his throat, to crawl into his every pore and latch on— he could pick out the smell of rancid garbage from the alley, then another layer; rat feces, and then, deeper than that, everywhere, the smell of Paris’ sewer but somehow stronger, somehow permanent, like it had settled its film of stench over everything. Just as he had learnt to see, his body had now learned to smell, as if everything had been blurred before.

“It’ll be worse for you if you do that,” was Valjean’s quiet interjection. The man hadn’t attempted to physically prevent him from doing this, from ridding his stomach of its foul contents, but had come to stand beside Javert, just aside from the slowly-forming pool of blood, bile and wine. “If you’re trying to prevent… it’s too late. The blood is to-”

“Prevent me from searching for victims on my first night.” Javert wiped his mouth, throat now sorer than before with the application of acid to the rawness.

“Javert…”

Javert couldn’t handle the pitying tone of the voice, as if Valjean were a concerned neighbour, taking care of a drunkard. “What a cruel punishment you’ve thought of.” He spat, attempting to rid his mind as well as his body. “Eternal damnation,  _ Monsieur,  _ truly despicable.” He laughed, a short, crazed sound, his grin more akin to a rabid dog’s than the wolf he’d been in life.

“If you do not digest something now, the craving will become uncontrollable. There is no telling what… who you might attack. Please Javert, let me feed you.”

“More of yourself, Valjean? Perhaps I might, perhaps I’ll allow you to drain yourself for me. The man of mercy till the last.”

“If that will please you, Javert. Only, I do not wish you to commit an act you will later come to regret.”

“Done plenty of that, have you not?”

Valjean glanced away, down and to the right. “Come.” The bottle appeared again from behind Valjean’s back, Javert able to see that it was half-full now that they were in the light of the dawn.

Loathsome as the man was, Valjean had a point. If Javert did not drink this wicked drink now, he might not have the strength to pick and choose who to attack later on, when left on his own. He had seen plenty of new ‘recruits’, who had starved themselves out of their minds, only to cause more damage to the world as they went on a mindless ravaging spree. Javert would not become one of them. He would sooner die.

He took the bottle from Valjean and drank, attempting not to think of the taste, of the fact that he was drinking the lifeblood of the criminal. That this creature’s blood would be what fuelled him for the next few hours, days… however long it would need to last. When he had finished, he dropped the bottle to the floor, the glass smashing across the cobbles.

The sound might alert the boys, he knew, but he had so little strength to care about anything right now, and if, as seemed to be the case, Valjean was intent on letting him go, he would need that precious energy to get through the next few hours. He would have to pretend to his colleagues, to his superiors, to the world that he had come out of this war as human as he had gone in.

“No. 7 Rue de l'Homme-Armé, Javert. Find me there, when you are able, under the name Fauchelevant.”

“Rue de l’Homme-Armé,” Javert repeated, trance-like.

“No. 7. Remember.”

Javert stumbled back a couple of steps, staggering, unable to believe.

When Valjean didn’t seem to be setting a trap, when he looked, for all intents like he would allow Javert to leave, with his life, Javert turned, hurrying for a few paces.

_ With my life. The tattered remnants of it.  _ He slowed to a halt, just before the small barricade at the back of the building he had been imprisoned in. Too much longer and this area would be teeming with soldiers, stemming any escape from the barricade. “You should have killed me.”

Valjean had produced a pistol, perhaps taken from one of the dead National Guardsmen, or perhaps given to him by one of the boys. Either way, the bullet drove into the wall beside him as Javert ran through the escape route he had been given. He could hear the bullet scream as it whipped through the air, followed by the gritty thud of metal lodging in brick— the report of the gun nearly deafening. He screwed his eyes shut as the deafening whine kept with him for another hundred metres. It seemed louder, clearer than any gunshot ever had before. He could practically feel the ripples of it underneath his skin. 

Hopefully he would not be shot as a traitor once he has reached the other side. 

He had not called Valjean “thou”. 

He would have preferred being shot.

-

Beside the Seine was the Morgue— a simple building lined with cells, bodies behind the bars like prisoners, strapped to exhibition slabs. Lately Paris city-guides had added it as a must-see destination. The cadavers had become a public spectacle. Mothers would take their children. Soldiers would visit when they had an hour spare. Valjean thought that he may be the only one of the crowd there attempting to identify a body.

In the early hours of the morning, people in need of coin would row across the river to collect the bodies it carried. They would return the corpses to the police for a small reward. The police would give the bodies to the morgue, and, every day, Valjean would visit hoping every morning he would leave the same as he had entered. Javert had disappeared after the barricade and Valjean could not catch any information about his whereabouts beyond a small note left at the police house beside the Pont au Change.

He hoped Javert had had enough of the blood to help him survive so long alone. He did not want Javert to feel obliged to stay with him, but he felt responsible, and like Javert could only cultivate hatred with his distance. 

It was ridiculous. Valjean had spent literal decades wishing to be rid of the man, only to find himself waking before dawn to check for the man’s body.

After a few weeks, it seemed unlikely Javert’s corpse would be found, if he had done as Valjean suspected and attempted to take his own life. Such an act would not kill most of their kind, but Javert had been weak, barely functioning. His body could have given in.

But, then, if Valjean knew Javert, he would not have simply allowed his body to give in. ...The Javert Valjean knew would not have committed suicide. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

There was a knock at No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Arme.

Valjean heard it from his room, but had stopped expecting visits from Cosette and her husband, a vampire by the name of Marius— the same boy Valjean had taken from the barricade just shy of six months ago. 

Marius knew that Valjean had killed the spy, Javert, at the barricade to protect his identity as a thief and parole-breaker. Marius was thus keen to keep a murderer and a liar from having any further contact with his wife. Valjean understood. It had been exactly what he had feared should the day come when he would give Cosette away. 

He shifted in his chair, the wood legs creaking. As the days passed, the more he was coming to identify with the chair. Valjean had not left the room for nearly three months now. His body was set to give. He did not expect nor hope for guests. He did not expect nor hope to live. All that stayed Valjean’s hand from the deed itself was the thought that to die by one’s own hand would be a final betrayal to the memory of Bishop Myriel. 

Another knock at another door, this time closer. The door to his room. Valjean frowned. The housekeeper was not due to offer him food for another four hours. He went to talk, only to find his throat dry and cracked. He cleared his throat. “I am not hungry, Madame.” 

“May I enter?”

It was not the voice of the elderly woman of the house, but the voice of a ghost. Valjean almost found the thought amusing, that he would be called to heaven by the voice of the Inspector that had haunted him his entire life. 

“Yes,” Valjean said in a whisper, ready. More ready than he could have believed.

The Inspector was strangely corporeal. Valjean had been expecting a spectre, an apparition sent to direct him towards his judgement. Nevertheless, Valjean relaxed, closing his eyes to his death.

Blood. The sudden smell of it, overwhelming. It took Valjean seconds to snap his attention away from the intoxicating pull of it. 

“Drink,” the ghost of the Inspector was saying as he pressed a bottle against Valjean’s lips. “I will not have you die now.”

Valjean’s initial instinct was to drink, to accept the offering and regain some of the life he had wasted away. It was cool, and thick, and— too close to human. He choked, drinking too fast and spluttering his mouthful out. There was a tut, then a rough clap to Valjean’s back, forcing him to cough and clear his airways.

Once Valjean’s throat had stopped stinging, the bottle was again forced to his lips. As he slowly gained coherency, he understood what was happening; being bottle fed blood by the inspector, healed by the liquid, no longer on the brink of death. 

It was Javert, then, and not a spectral force of God. 

“What is it?” Valjean asked, not able to place the taste to any animal he knew. 

“Mostly pig, some lamb. It simulates the taste of human. I was hoping  _ closer  _ to human might mean that there were similar effects on the body.” The tone of Javert’s voice implied there had not been much luck yet.

“You’ve tried different amounts of each animal?” 

Javert nodded, fiddling with the cork of the bottle. “Cow, poultry, any animal I could buy from the butcher. I have been attacked by enough of our kind to know this is the closest I have come so far.”

Valjean frowned, at once alarmed that Javert spoke of being attacked so casually, and confused as to how he had not smelled the mixture until it was in his immediate vicinity. “I could not smell it before.”

“The trick is the container.” Javert held up his bottle, apparently custom-made. “It must be tightly sealed to prevent the smell from escaping. Plus, I rather gather you were on your last breath.” 

Custom-made bottle, human-like but not human-made blood, referring to being a vampire as a shared experience, an ‘our’, Javert was not the same man Valjean had known. 

Javert was inspecting Valjean’s room, looking completely unsurprised that Valjean would be living in a freezing, unfurnished room populated with nothing but a hard bed, a writing desk and a wooden chair. Above the bed were the twin candlesticks, above them, a simple cross. 

Javert watched the cross for a moment longer. “I thought you had given me a false address.” He did not fidget, no doubt having killed all outward signs of hesitance years ago, but Valjean could sense that the inspector was unsure of what he was admitting. “I’ve been watching your house. It occurred to me that you might have moved, only…” Sheepish, Javert tapped his chest with two fingers in a slow pulse; unrecognisable as a human’s. 

Valjean recognised the beat as his own, though minutes ago, it had been much slower; a beat on the verge of death. Conscious that Javert could very easily read his current mental state, Valjean shifted from his seat on the chair, rubbing sensation back into his limbs. 

“Your daughter married, then.” 

Valjean nodded. 

“Apparently I address the father of a baroness.” 

Valjean did not move. “I have no right to call the baroness my daughter. I have cut that tie from her, if that is what you have come to address.” 

Valjean read confusion in Javert’s expression. “Cut… your ties? Valjean, what have you done?”

“I assume you have come to warn me not to near the baroness again, lest a negative light be cast upon her.” Resigned to his fate, Valjean met Javert’s eye.

Javert was incredulous. “What? ...Why?”

Valjean realised, after a beat, that Javert was waiting for an actual answer to his questions. Not since he was Madeleine had Javert expected a conversation to follow his demands. Valjean was much more used to providing his explanations to a deaf ear. 

When they had exchanged their blank looks, Valjean and Javert discovered their incomprehension was mutual. Valjean was the first to laugh, hoping to break the rising tension. “I think we need to talk.”

“Perhaps,” Javert conceded, his rigid posture relaxing by several degrees.

“I’ll have Toussaint bring up another chair, and tea if you would not mind drinking it. She will not think kindly of me if I have a guest without offering him so much as a drink.”

“No, I-”

“Javert. I know you are not a man of pity, but consider this dying man’s last request.” Valjean said this with a slight smirk, knowing Javert not to be a man of humour. 

He was very much surprised when Javert rolled his eyes, almost… fond. 

-

As Toussaint prepared the drinks, Valjean collected the papers from his desk and left them in a neat pile on his bed, setting the chairs at the desk in a crude attempt at hospitality. “I apologise,” he said as he worked, “I did not ever intend to entertain guests.”

Javert simply watched Valjean work, not wanting to get in the other man’s way. “It is my fault, I might have informed you of my visit.”

The stiff attempts at playing the guest-host relationship, one neither had actively attempted before with anyone, let alone with one another, gradually become less icy as they sat, and tea arrived, and they staged steeping, pouring and sipping.

Having had time to think over Valjean’s comments, Javert set his cup down with a reformed plan of attack. “You told Cosette, or, more likely her husband, the bare minimal of your past to incriminate yourself but enough to pretend that you have come clean, absolving yourself of the lie. Thus you have been prevented from seeing the couple, due to their misconceptions of you.” 

Valjean’s cup stayed halfway to his lips, his eyes on the rippling contents. “...That’s not… Accurate. I told the Baron the truth. What he did with it was his decision to make.”

“I thought you abhorred lying.”

“I did not lie.”

“Omitting the truth, Valjean, is lying, as we both well know. Madeleine was a lie. Fauchelevent is a lie.” Seeing Valjean had not unfrozen from his position, Javert sighed. “Now, I see, they were necessary lies. I… have not agreed with you in the past, but now…” Valjean looked up from his tea, the barest flutter of panic in his expression. “I do not think you were wrong in hiding your identity.”

To Javert’s utmost horror, Valjean had a literal heart palpitation, the shock of Javert’s admission making the man skip an actual beat. The horror of giving the man a stroke spurred Javert into action: Javert took Valjean’s cup from his hand before Valjean could drop it, gently plying it from his fingers and setting it back on the desk. 

When Valjean did not keel over, dead from shock, Javert noticed that Valjean seemed to be crying. 

Not knowing whether to bring up the tears or to push on as if it weren’t happening, Javert decided he might as well push the point while Valjean seemed emotionally responsive.

“So you’ll listen to me, then, when I say I know you perhaps better than any man on this earth, and that while hiding your past has brought prosperity to towns and life to children, this  _ lie  _ that you are nothing but an old con, is doing more damage than good.”

Valjean shaded his eyes with one hand and covered his mouth with the other, his body shaking as he cried. It was oddly eerie to watch a man break so completely in such silence. 

While he waited for Valjean to regain composure, Javert wondered how long it had been since Valjean had had a conversation without having to worry about trapping himself in a complex web of lies. He wondered whether Valjean had been able to be himself in Faverolles; been able to play with his sister’s children, or whether he had been as much of a shell even then. Javert’s curiosity would not let him let the question go; was Valjean’s altruism intrinsic to his very being, or was it a learnt habit? 

Perhaps, one day, Javert might be able to ask. 

“I did not peg your daughter’s husband as an ingrate.” Javert was thankful that Valjean seemed to have stopped shaking. “To treat his saviour as a common criminal…” 

That night had been the first in many years that Javert had retched, and it had not been a singular occurrence as his senses had heightened, the true grime of Paris flooded him. The blood of the barricade, the piss in the street, nothing prepared him for hauling Valjean and Marius to the baron’s house. Even the memory of the smell threatened to make Javert gag. In some ways, he was thankful he had not returned to his house that night; his soiled greatcoat swallowed by the Seine instead of stinking out his room.

_ God  _ only knew what a vampire of Valjean’s age would have smelt in the depths of Paris in the long hours he had been down there. Valjean had wiped his eyes, but, wordless, he continued to sip at his cup. Javert’s eyes narrowed. “He does  _ know _ about your trials that night.” Silence. “Oh for  _ God’s sake _ , Valjean.” Javert realised that it was very easy to mistake Valjean for a hardened criminal mastermind when Valjean’s social tactic seemed to be to leave so much of his actions out in order to seem  _ worse _ .

“Ah,” Valjean tried at last, as if he had not been accused of slander.  “You must have come for some purpose, forgive my selfishness. What is it you would like to discuss with me?”

Javert did not think Valjean’s self-deprecation worthy of a reply, simply rolled his eyes. “No purpose. None but concern. Why did you not tell Marius it was you who brought him home?”

“It did not seem relevant. Why were you concerned about me?”

Javert sensed the conversation derailing, Valjean finding Javert’s weaknesses and pushing at them so as to distract him from Valjean’s. 

“Are you honestly telling me that I had no reason to be concerned? That if I had not brought you blood today, you would have been fine?”

“No, but—” Valjean was, to say the very least, at a loss for words. “Javert, when we parted last, you said you wished I had killed you, that what I had done to you was  _ worse _ than killing you, and I agree— what I’ve done to you throughout our lives is more than enough excuse for you to hate me as you do— so... why? Why were you concerned about me?”

Javert sat back in his chair, letting out a breath for old time’s sake, sighing for the sake of it. He closed his eyes. 

He didn’t know. Why  _ had  _ he staked out Valjean’s house? Because he was curious as to whether Valjean had lied. When he had thought he  _ had _ , when he had not seen Valjean leave or enter the house, he had been disappointed. Disappointed that the truth he had been attempting to confront turned out to be yet another of Jean Valjean’s lies. 

But once he had found that Valjean  _ had  _ told the truth, he did not have time to confront why he felt  _ relief _ : he knew, then, about Valjean’s body’s worsening condition, how close he was to death.

“I have come to the realisation that there is a stretch of time ahead of me. I took to plotting revenge against you. My first port of call was to check whether you did, indeed, reside here. Once I had gone through the trials of tracking you down, I took more time to think. This proved perilous. I spent the last of my hatred on myself. And now, here I am.” Javert lifted his teacup in Valjean’s direction. “A truce.”

“A truce?”

“If you will have it. I regret my life, almost the entirity of it. I will not forgive myself, nor do I think you should forgive me of my sins. My truce regards our mutual hatred of one-another. As this conversation proves, I feel we have enough self-hatred without the added pressure.”

“A truce,” Valjean repeated, sounding dangerously close to another stroke. “Then we should… talk,” Valjean said. “About everything. Toulon. M— sur M—.” 

Javert would not meet Valjean’s eye. He wasn’t ready. “What does it matter now?”

“It matters, because I cannot understand you, Javert, and neither can you understand  _ me _ if we do not share our narratives. So much of what you have been taught: by yourself, by others, if we are to… continue together without animosity, I’d like to know what will affect your treatment of me.”

Javert had nothing to fall back on. He had no pre-made arguments. No past experience. He was, for the very first time, alone in his decision. He was honestly unsure what he wanted from being in such proximity with Valjean. He felt his past like a pit in his stomach, threatening to overrule him, volatile, powerful. He didn’t understand Valjean, he still didn’t, even now he was supposedly on his side. 

Javert, searching for anything to latch onto, recalled the lectures he had been given as a member of the police, that even if his skin was not white, he must not sympathise with the men darker than he. “I was taught that your freedom might ‘infect the slaves with a sense of independence and mobility’, Valjean.” Javert could feel his stomach flip to say the words, the self-hatred he continually endured to overcome his own prejudice. It did not feel ‘just’ to obey the law, now. “I was taught many things that I could, but never have, exercised upon you. Should I tell you each of those, too?”

Valjean’s hands clenched. Javert watched them do so. He felt it would be right for Valjean to beat him, now, to finally realise what a callous, hate-filled man Javert was. He watched as Valjean’s pale palms became paler, the strength of his angered fingers rejecting his blood. The pinky of Valjean’s fist connected with the table, but the strength of it seemed curtailed, the anger escaping from the now-unclenching fist into the wood.

Javert unscrewed his jaw, slowly, forcefully, still watching Valjean’s hands, still unsure whether Valjean might be provoked into attack. Valjean was more used to his superhuman strength, after all, and Javert had begun to suspect that, even within the undead, Valjean was not to be considered of ‘average’ strength. 

Valjean had never attacked him, Javert realised. In all the years, in all the hatred, Valjean had not once attacked Javert. He had made threats in Toulon, they had played cat and mouse, but… Valjean had not touched Javert with the intent to harm.

“I don’t know,” Javert said, after a long silence. “I don’t know if I can.” Javert had beaten Valjean multiple times. 

“Well, we have eternity for company.” Valjean poured more tea from the teapot into their empty teacups. Then swilled his cup, watching the leaves dance as he did so. “Why not start the conversation now?”


	3. Chapter 3

Javert had not meant to kill him.

He had been a young man then, only twenty three, attempting to please his superiors, attempting to fit his actions to the Justice he knew he had to become. The man below him was thirty four, he was told, only eleven years his senior and yet had toiled in this prison for seven years before Javert’s arrival. The man was just another Jean, another number. He had been a manual labourer before his criminal activities, that much was obvious from his broad shoulders. 

But this manual labourer must have been poor. Must have had a large family. He was weak, feeble, little more than skin stretched atop bones. He had probably been strong, but seven years of mould-crusted food and purposeful prevention of sleep had changed this. This Jean Valjean was bound to die.

Valjean had been in trouble with many of his fellow prisoners. They did not like having to sleep with a man darker than them. They attacked him, pushed him about, and Javert had allowed it. This was what he had been taught was natural behaviour in scum like those below him. They could not be changed, no matter what he tried.

And then Valjean had tried to escape. Javert’s superiors recommended the lash for his disobedience, to prove his virtue as a guard. There was no room for pity, not at Toulon, not for men like these. Javert never felt pride or joy from the act as some guards did. But at twenty three he had felt sick, could still feel the lashes against his own back from a not-so distant past. Instead of the lash, he had opted to strip Valjean from his rights to food.

It was slow. Much slower than the lash. Ten times a minute, Javert would change his mind as he watched Valjean’s abused body slowly turn into a corpse before his eyes. Ten times, he would choose his reputation over Valjean’s suffering.

Javert knew that Valjean’s silence, as he lay convulsing on the floor, was no subservience. Javert had meant to make an example out of Valjean, yes. But he had not meant to kill him. He had changed shifts, avoided the prisoners of that particular area of the bagne. 

A year later, Javert had been pleased to discover that Valjean had not died. That he had survived the starvation. Javert had wondered, in his youth, at how the man could have recovered his colour and his strength quite so quickly, at how he had gone from a sickly, dying frame of a man to the almost mountainous one only twelve years later when he left Toulon. 

Javert had worked it out soon enough, of course. Valjean must have been one of the creatures all along, pretending to starve to garner Javert’s pity. Waiting for the chance to attack. 

-

Valjean had never known so much pain, and yet, to die seemed like a blessed relief. This new guard, this youth barely out of childhood, to die at his hand seemed like a cruel twist of fate that Valjean was only too ready to accept. Valjean had died by the hand of a child, because he had wanted to feed a child. He was too exhausted to feel anger, to feel horror, to pray. He had given up on God long ago.

And then he could breathe again. His stomach did not groan or heave at the mere thought of food. His muscles knitted together again, his bones regained their strength. For months, Valjean was in and out of consciousness, a bleary haze of faces he had now long forgotten.

Valjean was convinced it had been Javert who had made him what he was. Into this creature. He had seen the pleased look being given him, had watched as the young Javert had applauded his sudden, almost miraculous strength. Had exploited that strength in order to prove that  _ his _ prisoners worked the hardest.

So Valjean retaliated. He had attempted to escape again and again. He had added years onto his sentence: what use had he with years? He was, as far as he could tell, immortal. Years would mean nothing. And Valjean had assumed Javert was the same. That they would be playing this cat and mouse for centuries.

Until, almost ten years later, Valjean had realised that the young, smooth-faced guard was now a figment of his imagination, that the Javert who looked down upon him was now the age Valjean had been, would look forever. The ten years had not been unkind to Javert, but they had certainly taken their toll on his frown, on his permanent scowl, his distrust. It was then that Valjean had realised Javert was human, and a human ignorant of the otherworldly entities surrounding him.

Valjean did not know why he felt especially protective, from then on, only that he knew that if anyone was to be the death of Javert, it would be him. He could not abide the thought of the jailor falling by anyone’s hand but his own. Valjean would imagine himself killing Javert as the guard watched them toil, as he watched the prisoners eat, work, sleep.

Valjean hated Javert. For killing him. For leaving him vulnerable to whoever had done this to him. Immortalised him in a life he wouldn’t wish on anyone. Valjean would have to escape somehow. Eventually Javert would be old enough, would have watched Valjean long enough to realise that he had not aged a day since his thirty-fourth year. Thus came his blessed relief. Patrole.

-

M— sur M— was a town like most; filled with sin and hatred. But unlike most, it had recently gained a benefactor, a lawful factory owner. Javert did not like this man. 

The mornings were dark at this time of year. The nights were darker. Every night, Javert would walk a path from the church towards the dock. From the church he would receive holy water to coat his weapons, leaving just enough to use to test his captured party. M— sur M— was a nest of vampires and Javert was determined to kill every one of the scum that resided amongst the innocent civilians of the town. He had had a tip that a blood bank operated near the docks, where women prostituted their bodies for human and vampire vice alike. 

Every night he would pick off a man from the group, catch him by the neck with a noose and drag the superhumanly powerful creatures into the darkness while he had them surprised, most struggling against the bonds like fish writhing in a net. A splash of holy water would test what sin the man had been looking for. If the liquid dribbled off them, he would be questioned about his associates before being freed at dawn with a warning not to return. A fizzle of black smoke, usually accompanied by an inhuman scream allowed Javert the rare pleasure of burying a stake deep within the heart of the vampire he had caught.

Tonight was colder than most, which Javert almost relished. The cold meant there was a greater chance his catch would not be human. Not many humans ventured out in weather like this but him. His path was not lit. It never was. To use light would be a beacon as to his location. To sneak up on a creature with animal-like smelling, Javert would test the wind, like one would if on the hunt for game.

He had further masked anything that might give his sent away as his own; he did not wear his usual greatcoat on hunts like this, instead using one he had taken from a dead drunk. It smelt of tobacco, sweat and alcohol, as most of the inhabitants of the docks did.

Once he had reached his favourite haunt, he stopped in the shadows of a dilapidated building, leaning against the brick as if he were resting to chew his tobacco. Long shadows would flicker past, but most would smell of heady perfume and sex. Prostitutes were not his game on hunts like this.

A crunch of a footstep against the frosted grass. Javert glanced at the man passing. Well-kept, attractive, clean. Something about this man’s pace was different from the usual  _ slink  _ of the creatures who passed through. It seemed familiar. Javert dislodged himself from the building and trailed the man further than he usually dared. The steady pace was easy enough to keep up with without being caught. 

Javert was curious; it ruined his habits. They passed the usual divide where he would collar his victim, around corners, further into the labyrinthine streets of the docks. Javert could feel his heart pick up— dangerous in a place like this. He took deeper breaths and calmed himself. This was no time for nerves.

The thought crossed him that this could be his death. A trap set to catch the hunter hunting the creatures. The target was almost too perfect, and Javert realised he would not be able to navigate himself back to the town from wherever he was.

A door burst open to Javert’s left. He ducked away from it, hoping the noise had not attracted his prey’s attention towards himself. The open building was releasing shouts, music and, crucially, candlelight. A shock of thrill ran through Javert as the light illuminated the figure. It was the mayor who continued the path he had been taking, seemingly oblivious to the door that had just released its patrons. 

Javert sobered himself quickly. He would have to continue the chase to gather more evidence. The mayor, the judge might rule, was known for giving alms and many beggars chose the docklands. Javert had no evidence that the mayor was here to sin. Another thought crossed him, but he dulled it quickly. The mayor was known for the small brass cross hung around his neck. If he were a vampire, the constant touch of cross to skin would be no small agony.

Javert took stock of his surroundings. Tonight was not the night to continue the chase. It was getting towards the hour patrons would stumble home, and there was far to walk before he was free from the stench of the docklands— too far to travel alone with his reputation as a hunter.

Javert made a note of the clothes the mayor was wearing. Not like anything Javert had seen the man wear in public, which seemed to suggest a disguise. Javert allowed himself a smile. Why would the mayor need a disguise unless he were up to something irreputable?

Javert would have to plan how to catch this man without getting caught himself.

He walked into the street to take stock of where he was, pulling his cap further down his face to hide his eyes, the collar of his coat hiding the bottom half of his face. He had lost sight of the mayor, but that was fine, he would let the man go for now.

He backtracked through streets he could remember, guessed ones he couldn’t. The light had not been conducive to following the mayor, and Javert had spent too much time concentrating on not losing his target instead of memorising the route. 

Several minutes into his journey, he heard the telltale footsteps of a gang; purposeful and heavy footed but with hushed voices, swaying in an out of hearing. Javert attempted to casually speed his pace. He was alone, lost, and underprepared; three significant handicaps in a fight. 

As was to be expected from the circumstance, Javert found himself in a street he was fairly sure he’d never seen before that turned a corner only to become a dead end. There was a laugh as his only exit was blocked. Javert gripped the handle of his baton under his coat. If his assailants were human, he might survive this. If they were not, he would at least try to take some down with him. 

“Out for a walk, Monsieur?” The leader called, bulking himself up. Javert kept his hat lowered. They had not called him inspector. If they did not know who he was, they might let him live. “Not seen you round these parts.”

“Just docked, boy.” Javert deepened his voice. Perhaps they might be more lenient towards a wearied sailor. 

“Looking for a bit of entertainment are we?” one of the group cajoled.

“‘s right.”

“We’ve just run out of money… you wouldn’t mind sharing some of yours, help a couple boys along?”

He considered a non-confrontational approach. To give the boys what they wanted. Javert avoided gripping the wallet in his pocket. He could not afford to lose the money he kept on him. He had little enough to sustain himself, let alone give away to these drunks. “Spent it,” Javert said, putting a drunken lilt to his voice. He hoped he looked like a man kicked out from a beerhouse and who had lost his way. 

“Oh, that’s a shame,” the lead boy said. “You won’t mind emptying your pockets for us anyway?” 

Javert took a step towards them, careful to keep up his rouse. He needed to pass them, one way or another. First, he would attempt camaraderie. They did not part as he closed the distance between them. He would have to brush against them before they would move, he thought.

“We asked nicely, old man.”

The first hit knocked the air out of his lungs; a punch to the gut bending him in half. A second, to the back of the head, forced him to the ground. He felt his chin smash against the cobble floor. The boys hauled him over, hands going through his pockets. One pulled out his baton. Another his stake.

The leader let out a smooth whistle before flicking off Javert’s cap. “ _ Inspector _ ,” he said, “This is not a nice neighbourhood to find yourself lost in.”

Javert tried to pull himself up, but the leader tutted, holding the stake to Javert’s neck. “Sharp, this. Could do some real damage.” Another boy held out Javert’s pillaged wallet. It was dropped on Javert’s stomach. Javert growled, forming his words, memorising the boys’ faces. 

“You’re lucky we’re no friends of  _ them _ .” The youngest boys looked around, as if even mentioning the creatures could draw them out of the darkness.

“You shall not escape from this unpunished,” Javert spat. 

The leader could not be older than twenty. The rest, children. The leader smiled. Pushed the prick of the stake into Javert’s skin until it broke, before dropping it, letting the warm blood trickle down Javert’s neck. 

“Must’ve slipped.” The boys sniggered. “Good luck, Inspector. I hope you don’t find yourself in the company of those less friendly than us.” Javert watched them scamper off, keeping in a tight group. Preventative methods to keep from being picked off while nobody was looking. 

Javert groaned as he sat up, feeling the muscles in his stomach pull. He raised a hand to his neck. It did not come away covered in blood, but it was no papercut. He pressed his hat against the cut, mopping up at least some of the blood. He managed to stand, leaning against the alley wall as he decided where to go from there. 

The boys were right. He didn’t know how close one of the vermin would have to be to smell blood, but he imagined he would attract quite some attention if he were to walk through the main streets with his neck pre-cut for them.

He glanced at the woolen, slightly damp cap and threw it towards the back of the alley. Hopefully that might distract anything that followed his scent. He pulled his collar up as far as it could go. He felt nearly naked without his face covered. Who knew who might recognise him and finish the job the boys had started.

Javert had made it all of five steps before his name was hissed at him. “Inspector?” The mayor swept towards him, tugging off his own hat to cover Javert’s head. “You shouldn’t be here.” The mayor’s eyes flicked from shadow to shadow in terror. 

“Monsieur Mayor,” Javert laughed, “It is you who should not be here.” Javert tilted his head up to squint at the mayor, wondering, vaguely, where the man had been since Javert had lost sight of him. 

“There is no time, Javert. You must go, before anyone catches you here.”

“Not until you explain your own reason for being here.” The mayor grimaced. Javert had him caught. 

The mayor reached into his pockets. Javert wound himself for a fight, tensing his muscles, watching for the glint of a knife. The mayor drew his hands out and showed their contents. Javert’s shoulders slackened. One hand held a fistful of rosaries from the mayor’s factory, the other small vials of water. Holy water, Javert would assume by their size. 

“To help the women protect themselves from attack. There’s been a spate of murders recently that I would like to prevent from increasing.”

Javert’s jaw clenched. The disguise to stop rumours as to his being seen in the alleys from spreading. The secrecy because he did not want to fuel his reputation for unconstrained charity, or to be convinced otherwise by people like Javert.

“You’re injured. We should hurry.” Javert’s hand came to his neck, self-conscious to be seen weak. “You will attract unsavoury people if you stay here.” The mayor’s hand grabbed Javert’s upper arm, pushing him towards an alley to the left, the hand only moving once they had cleared the darker of the streets.

The mayor could not possibly have seen the small nick below Javert’s collar. Perhaps he had witnessed the attack; had not wanted to jump in and ruin his own disguise. Or perhaps he had relished the chance to watch the only man openly against him in the town kicked to the floor. Perhaps he was a vampire and could smell the blood, and was leading him towards a quiet spot to enact Javert’s demise.

Javert allowed himself to be pulled along by the mayor, their pace quick. Eventually he recognised roads he had passed before; could place himself again. They passed the spot he had initially started to trail the mayor, then through the main part of town, before arriving at the factory. 

The mayor directed Javert into the building first and Javert walked through to the mayor’s office. Perhaps he would be asked to debrief why he himself was there, and in the sorry clothing that he was wearing. The mayor walked behind his desk, hung up his cloak and looked at Javert. He pulled Javert’s stake from his coat pocket and placed it on his desk. “This is not police equipment, Inspector.”

“No.”

“Did you stab yourself?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“A group of boys I did not recognise. Rest assured I will find them and put them to justice.”

“Perhaps it was an accident.”

“They took my wallet. I can assure you it was not.”

A look passed across the mayor’s face. It was remarkably close to pity, but with a fraction less compassion than the mayor usually sprung on victims. Understanding, perhaps. 

“How much did they take?”

Javert’s lips thinned. He was to be treated like a beggar. “That does not concern you.”

“Inspector. Until you can find the boys who took your money, you must eat.”

“So must you.”

“I have more than enough to eat,” the mayor said with a grim smile. “But I will not force you to take any.” The mayor bit his thumb, a curious action. “Let me see your injury. It must be treated before you return home.”

“It is not serious.” Javert was given a look, one he took to mean that ‘no’ was not an answer. Javert sighed and turned down his collar. 

He felt the mayor’s thumb stroke against the wound, first with his thumb and then with his handkerchief. “Monsieur,” Javert said, stepping back. “You will ruin it.”

“It was old,” the mayor said, tucking the material back into his pocket. “I was to throw it away this week anyway.” 

Javert did not believe him. He lifted his own hand to his neck to find the wound closed, the skin clean. The cut must have been small. He must’ve looked a real fool, having his nick cleaned by the mayor. He cringed, sought a way out. “I must leave. I must write my report before my shift.”

“Of course.” The mayor handed Javert his stake with a bit-down look.

“Good evening, Monsieur.” Javert bowed.

“Good evening, Javert.” As Javert turned to leave, the mayor hmm-ed. “Inspector?”

Javert watched as the mayor picked up a string of beads, a rosary. The rosary was one of the mayor’s own, had been sat on his desk, a personal possession rather than one of those from his pocket, to be given to the prostitutes.

Javert could not help but keep his eyes fixed on the small cross fixed to the beads. He watched as the wood shifted, toppled, rested against the vein on the heel of the mayor’s palm— Javert’s eyes snapped to the mayor’s face, to catch any sign of a flinch, of any pain, anything a vampire would feel had he been subjected to the crucifix.

Nothing.

Nothing but the mayor’s calm smile. The mayor held the rosary out towards Javert. “For you; a small token of appreciation. For your service.” 

Javert swallowed. The mayor was not a vampire. He had handled Javert’s stake. Could handle the cross. He did not visit brothels. He was a lawful man. The hard wall of Javert’s soul, formed from years of suspicion of the mayor were being lapped at by the softness of the smile. 

“No need, Monsieur, it is my job. I get paid.” Javert held his hands at his sides in clenched fists.

“Not nearly enough for the hard work you do. For the… overtime you work without pay.”

Javert focused on the floor. It felt nice that his hard work was being recognised by a man he was now coming to understand as a man who worked as hard as he. Javert felt… proud to be of service for this man for the first time. He nodded, and lifted one hand. The rosary was placed in it. Javert bowed again and left. 

-

When Javert woke up the next morning, he found a silver coin in a crack in his floorboard. It certainly was not his, it was worth nearly a month’s wage, four times what he had lost the night before. He would not have forgotten about it if he had ever owned it. It would not have rolled through the door, nor fell from the room above. Someone had been inside his room, and had wedged it there to make it look like an accident. 

-

Javert started to accompany the mayor on his nightly visits to the docks. The mayor forbade Javert from going alone lest he be mugged again. Javert used the same reason to prevent the mayor from going himself. They held themselves at a stalemate that neither, both could tell, wanted to be at. They could really only go in one direction; together. 

At first their walks were silent and tense. Javert did not wish to cause trouble for the mayor, but he also disagreed with how the mayor would let acts of crime pass without judgement. The mayor did not like Javert’s violence, did not like his use of the stake.

Soon, they adjusted themselves to an equilibrium. Far from perfect, but able to keep up a steady conversation on most days without coming to an angry standstill.

“Until tomorrow,” Javert said as his ritual parting words.

“No, I…” Javert tilted his head, the mayor’s response unexpected. “I am not available tomorrow.” 

The mayor looked tired after their hunt that day. He had spoken less than usual on their walk to the dock, even less on the walk back to the station. He had also attempted to be more lenient than normal too, something Javert resisted until the mayor had almost seemed to snap, using his authority over Javert to overrule his verdict to let the prostitute they had caught with fresh puncture wounds go without naming who had done it to her. 

Javert had argued that she was withholding crucial evidence. The mayor had said she would be a target of attack if it was known she had given the information to the inspector. 

Javert bowed. “If I may speak?”

“Of course, Inspector.”

“You should try to get some sleep. You look tired.”

Valjean snorted. “I’m glad I look that way to you.” Javert felt himself colour, glad for the orange cast of the candlelight to prevent the mayor for seeing how foolish he felt. “Thank you, Javert.”

Javert’s brows pinched. “For insulting you?”

“For caring. You should get some rest yourself; I know how early you start your shifts. Good night, Javert.”

Javert bowed again, not knowing how to respond. 

On the walk home, Javert wondered what the mayor was doing. They had not spent one night apart this last month. They had hunted every day. Certainly, Javert’s number of kills had decreased, but so had the number of civilian victims.

Javert was curious. Curiosity turned to suspicion. Suspicion turned to self-loathing. What right had he for suspecting the mayor? Who had been a perfect civilian? Javert clutched the rosary in his pocket. Sometimes, he disagreed with the mayor but, he thought, he trusted him. He certainly trusted him with his life these days, and there wasn’t much else Javert could give someone but that.

-

Javert felt strangely alone as he walked towards the docks the next night. He had made the journey alone for months before his journeys with the mayor and had not encountered any problem but the one mugging. He would be fine. 

It was getting colder as they approached winter. Soon would come snow, making it harder to track his prey without sound. He wondered how he and the mayor would overcome such a problem; though they looked less suspicious walking towards the dock together than one man walking through shadows. Soon they might be recognisable as regulars and given the benefit of the doubt by locals to the area. 

Javert resisted the urge to blow on his hands, stuffing them deeper into his pockets instead in the vain hope that doing so might find some heat deep within. His right hand, wrapped around his disused stake, felt like it had frozen into its grip around it.

He passed only one man on his way to the dock, an elderly man with a drunken stagger that looked like the parody of the character Javert had attempted to play only a month before.

Once he arrived at his old haunt, he leaned against the frozen brick and removed a bottle from one pocket. Uncorking it with numb hands was much harder than he could have imagined, the tiny glass bottle threatening to be crushed in his grip. He couldn’t get a hold of the cork so he removed his knife from another pocket, freshly whetted, stabbed the cork and twisted, perhaps more violently than was necessary. He hated that his body did not move as he wanted it to. It was weakness. He was only glad the mayor was not here to witness the sorry sight.

Thinking of the mayor brought back his complicated revelation from the night before; that he had hated the man for years, and that he didn’t understand why, or when, he had become so devoted him. 

Javert thought it was only appropriate. His earlier behaviour towards the mayor was inexplicable, and it was frankly absurd the mayor had not punished Javert for his disdain. But the mayor was above punishments simply to make an example out of someone. Another complicated string of thoughts from Javert’s youth. A prisoner who had not obeyed Javert. He had been one of the creatures, strong, manipulative. Javert poured the holy water over his weapons. Valjean had nearly convinced Javert that vampires could be pitied.

Javert’s thoughts towards the mayor were not inappropriate in nature, he was relieved to note. He simply respected the authority the mayor had. No further desires. He spotted a target and moved to follow. 

Javert could not work out what was wrong with the man he was following. By the way he walked, the man looked like just another man come to spend his money on alcohol and women; a sort of swagger that these men tended to adopt so as to seem important to at least someone in the world around them. But there was something additionally unpleasant in watching the way the man’s coat swung, and an unsettling feeling of familiarity swept through Javert. He did not recognise the man, he thought; though he could not see much of him, the way a man stepped was individual and Javert would recognise the footsteps of anyone he knew.

So perhaps the man was feigning the swagger to hide his appearance… Javert took a risk and closed some of the distance between them, to be just close enough to see the patches on the man’s coat, from years of being mended. A maroon patch on the left elbow. A dark navy replacement pocket. That coat was the mayor’s.

Anger swelled in Javert’s gut. He reached out and grabbed the mayor’s arm. Javert knew the mayor was strong, so he made his grip stronger. “What are you doing here?”

He did not expect the mayor to release a wail and try to rip his arm away. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry please don’t put me in prison I haven’t done anything yet, please—” 

Javert turned the man around.

This was definitely not the mayor. This man was in his middle-ages and about the mayor’s height, but scraggly and in need of cleaning. Javert recognised his face as one that usually sat outside the mayor’s factory, begging for scraps of food or coin.

“Where did you get this coat?” Javert demanded, the thought of the mayor’s mugged corpse lying drained of blood in a back alley hitting him like a wave of nausea.

“He gave it me, I swear, the mayor, he said it was cold and he gave it me!” 

Javert kept hold. It sounded plausible, but anyone could use the plausibility as an excuse to exploit the situation. To make sure, he should take the man to the police house, to jail him, extract answers. 

...But what would the mayor say if he found Javert holding the man he had so recently donated the coat to? Would he not think Javert paranoid? Unfit to serve in the mayor’s town? The mayor had put his trust in this beggar but Javert could not trust the mayor’s judgement? Javert would be mortified to be told by the mayor that he had overstepped his boundaries. 

His moment of indecision was evidently visual as he was punched square in the nose. The pure unexpected nature of it (very few of the men he previously caught were given the chance to fight back, before the mayor’s interference,) meant he was unprepared to follow the attack with one of his own— instead his grip slipped and the man went running.

Javert was stunned. He had allowed his thoughts of the mayor to override the usual imperative to attack, or to give chase. He blinked, then brought his hand up to his nose when he felt a thick track of warm blood drip from his nose. It didn’t feel broken, but there was more blood coming from his nose than had come from his neck. He removed his pocket handkerchief and held it to his nose, his gaze empty as he stared into the darkness.

Perhaps most disturbing was the emptiness he felt in having let the man go. Why had he been so angry when he thought the mayor had been out here, alone? He analysed the feeling. Jealousy? He had never been  _ jealous _ in his life. 

Betrayed? Betrayed that the mayor had lied to him, told him he would be busy. The mayor could go wherever he wanted without Javert’s permission, Javert thought, bitterly. But did they not have an agreement? The mayor did not want Javert to go alone because it was dangerous. Javert wanted the same from the mayor. 

Whatever the reason, it came to nothing now. The man was a beggar in the mayor’s coat, the mayor was not here but at home, resting, or catching up with paperwork. Javert had felt betrayed for no reason. 

_ Unless it was a distraction _ , a part of Javert told him. Javert felt sick. Why could he not convince himself to trust the man? He wanted to, desperately, but some part of him always brought out suspicions, suspicions he longed to drown. 

If the mayor knew Javert would be waiting for him at the corner he frequented. If he had left some coin in his coat pocket to urge the beggar towards the dock. If he was hiding something and wanted to distract Javert from finding him… there were a lot of ifs.  _ You’re paranoid _ , he told himself. He and the mayor had never walked the same route as the mayor had taken the first day, when Javert had tailed him.  _ Coincidence. _ But if that was the mayor’s usual route, why not take it with Javert?  _ Coincidence _ , he repeated. He shut his eyes, feeling his mind spin. 

He felt the blood slow. Wiped the back of his hand across his nose and sniffed. He wasn’t being paranoid, he was being careful. If the mayor  _ had  _ chosen to go out tonight, and he had gone to whatever destination he was heading to a month ago, it would be better if Javert was there to lend a hand.

He’d been paying attention when the mayor had dragged him home, lest he had to run from further danger, and so was able to find his way to the alley he had been mugged in. From there were two streets, towards home and towards where he’d lost the mayor the first time. He passed the inn that had spooked Javert and followed the street around a bend. Now he had a choice; to explore the handful of smaller alleys that branched off from the street, or find one he could perch in and wait. 

The first would be warmer, the second safer. He backtracked and found a space in an alley that could see out into the street without being seen. A perfect ambush. He tried not to follow the thought that the mayor might have already passed this spot, as it implied that Javert was certain the mayor  _ was  _ here under suspicious circumstances and this was not a simple search and rescue operation. 

Javert sat on a crate and waited. The skin on his hand itched. He scratched at it, then realised it was the dried blood from his nose, now caked under his fingernails. He rubbed at his nose, hoping to clean any remaining flecks. He regretted it once he felt the blood shift again, a thin trickle making its path back down his lips. 

The taste of iron and salt. He spat, pulled out his handkerchief and held it against his nose until it stopped. This was almost becoming a habit, bleeding in dark alleys. And if this was becoming a habit…

As if on cue, a laugh from the end of the alley, closing the entrance. Javert pinched the bridge of his nose, stuffed his handkerchief in his pocket and stood. Hopefully, it was just the boys, finding their prey again.

He glanced at the men and stilled.

“Inspector.” Adult men, mid-twenties and well-built. Hopefully jilted sailors. Thieves. Five or six of them. Javert gripped the stake in his pocket. “You’re bleeding.” 

Javert groaned.

One of the creatures was next to him in less than a flash, by his side, leaning close— Javert stabbed blindly, ripping the fabric of his pocket, not bothering to lift it out before attacking, knowing he didn’t have the time. There was a hiss but no contact between weapon and flesh on either end. 

Javert braced himself for another attack, both arms raised in front of him in defence. The tip of the stake was darker than the rest, the holy water soaked through the wood. One hit to the chest would kill the things, prevent them from healing themselves. He only needed to stab six times and then he would be safe. 

He lurched forward, trying to take one of the smaller ones by surprise, but even this target was too fast, and Javert tripped, tumbled over his own feet as he fell to the floor. They didn’t even use the chance to attack. They stood and watched as he picked himself up. He tried again, swiping as he did, hoping the target would misjudge the distance, would be slower, anything. Javert was met with air. He only just saved himself from tripping again. Another attack. The creature baited him before swishing to the side just before Javert could make contact.

He was already panting, for Christ’s sake. He hadn’t landed a hit and he was already panting. The attackers were in fits, laughing as they surrounded him in a circle. Weak. Weak, weak  _ weak, weak, weak _ — 

A muffled thud. An opening in the ring of creatures. As one, they all turned to see the missing member, unconscious against the wall. A second, then a third. Javert felt himself slip down the food chain, from prey to dirt. Whoever was picking these creatures off wouldn’t care he was human. The amount of strength it took to throw these men— it would not harm the creatures, but it would smash his skull— A flash of Valjean beating back prisoners who tried to attack him— A fourth hit the wall before the leader could think to protect himself— He and the remaining creature attempted to dodge— Javert could feel a harsh breath behind him, then watched as the leader was thrown over his shoulder— 

Javert stabbed behind him, as hard as he could, hoping to cripple the assailant at the very least by jamming it into the man’s thigh. There was a short gasp of pain, a thud as the man fell to his knees, a beat and then a familiar voice. 

“Javert,  _ run _ .”

Javert turned, horrified. The mayor. He had stabbed the mayor. The mayor had protected him and Javert had stabbed him— Javert wrenched the stake from the wound without thinking— 

The mayor had a hand to his side, blood on his fingers… then one wet hand came up to meet Javert’s neck, leaving bloodied finger marks along his neck. Javert, dumbstruck, touched his own hand to his neck. Was this some sort of marking of his guilt? Was it a sick sort of revenge? To draw attention to him? The mayor’s hands returned to his wound, and Javert’s eyes followed.

...Thick, acrid smoke sizzled from the wound like charred meat.

Javert’s heart stopped. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t move. They both watched as the wound sizzled, leaking thick drops of blood on the cobbled ground. Javert, dumbstruck, looked at the stake. Holy water. Smoke. He looked at the mayor. 

“ _ Run _ .” 

He should kill the creature while it was injured, drive the stake through the imposter’s heart and leave the corpse to rot in the raw sewage of the alley, surrounded by creatures like itself. A groan— the first thrown creature was waking. A second burst of adrenaline kicked Javert into action.

He ran. He stumbled a few steps before picking up speed. The wind felt like glass against his face, the cold of the air slicing across his skin. His jaw ached, he felt the moisture in his nostrils freeze.

He had left the mayor surrounded by the creatures, alone— he was one of them— he should have killed him— what if  _ they  _ killed him— the mayor had protected him— Javert had stabbed him— 

He slammed the door to his room behind him, pressing his weight against it as he tried to control his breathing, feeling his insides stab as his lungs heaved for air. He slid down the door, head between his knees. He couldn’t think—  _ shit,  _ he couldn’t breathe. 

This was not right, it wasn’t real, he couldn’t breathe— he’d seen worse, he’d fought worse, he’d been injured worse— he couldn’t breathe— 

-

Javert eventually moved to his bed, where he sat, looking at his hands. His eyes felt sore. His pride was sore. He was tired. 

-

A knock on the door. Somehow that amused Javert. He laughed. There was really only one man it could be. Maybe if he was quiet, the mayor wouldn’t know he was in. A beat. Of course, the mayor was a vampire, so he could probably smell him. Hear his heartbeat. Javert buried a hand in his hair, smoothing the long hairs back into some semblance of neatness.

“What,” he said, not raising his voice, not going to pretend like the mayor couldn’t hear him.

“I—” the mayor was silent for a second. Even with his human hearing Javert heard the floorboards creak as the mayor shifted on his feet. “Were you hurt?”

Javert’s dignity, however much had not been shattered, refused to reply. 

“I’m…” Javert thought he heard a wince in the voice, “Sorry, Inspector.”

Javert, listening now, could hear heavy breathing, like his own had been a half hour ago. Like a panic. Javert stood, the part of him that still wanted to trust the mayor flaring for control.  _ It’s a trick. _ He paused before opening the door— then remembered the bodies of the fallen creatures the mayor had saved him from. 

As the door opened, so fell the mayor, who must have been leaning against it, unable to support his weight. He fell heavily, and against Javert’s mind’s insistence to let him fall, Javert caught him enough to slow the fall, the mayor landing on his knees instead.

In the light of the room, the mayor looked almost corpse-like. Pale, bleeding, dirt in his face. No mercy had been taken on the mayor, that much was obvious. But there was something more. Something nearly feral. 

“You were bleeding so much I thought it was a trick,” the mayor said, laughing, self-conscious, barely forcing the words out. “And dripping a trail from place to place...”

“It was a nosebleed,” Javert said, unable to pin his emotions.

“Oh,” was all the mayor said, swaying slightly now that Javert had let go.

“You thought it was a trap and you still came?”

“You were in trouble.”

“With your kind.”

The mayor was silent. He’d closed his eyes, like he was concentrating really hard. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

Javert couldn’t decide whether the mayor meant M— sur M— or to Javert’s house. The answer to both was the same. “No, you shouldn’t have.”

The mayor’s eyes were still screwed shut, his breathing hard. His fingers were tapping a rhythm. Javert followed the fingers with his eyes. Tap. Tap. Tap. Beat. Beat. Beat. Badum. Badum. As the thought came, his heart sped, the fingers quickened. He stepped back, hand going to cover his neck like an instinct drilled into him. 

“I thought I could survive without eating,” he heard the mayor say, softly, the fingers still tapping. “A day. A week. A month. A year…” The mayor’s tapping fingers gripped into a fist, his face in cramped pain. “I thought I could stop. I thought… for so long, but if I don’t eat, Javert, I fear I’ll do something… something  _ bad _ .”

“Is that why you were there today?” Javert felt the emptiness of his words. “To eat?”

“I have never taken the blood of anyone without their consent. But— But if I don’t I might kill— one, one hundred— isn’t it… better to eat than kill?”

Javert watched the mayor, his face blank to the dull confusion on the mayor’s. “What consent can a prostitute give?” The words did not sound like Javert’s. They sounded like the mayor’s. When had he come to think of the prostitutes like the mayor did? He did not, Javert thought. He had just become more lenient towards them. It was the mayor who was being hypocritical. Some moral man. He looked tired. Out of his mind. This was not the mayor Javert knew.

The mayor was a vampire. But he had not been feeding. How long had he gone without feeding? How long was it until the haggard man before him became one of  _ them _ , one of the killers? Javert could return the mayor to how he’d been before. Could fix the broken mayor before him. Javert’s hand reached behind him, sweeping across his desk. The knife he used to whittle his stakes into sharp points. A clean cut across his palm. A shallow pool of blood. He cupped his hand to prevent any of the liquid from spilling. 

“The town needs you. It depends on you. You will work for me and defeat those who want to hurt it.” The mayor shook his head. He looked sick. Hungry. “It is my duty to serve this town. If you work with me to smite the rest of your kind, I will provide as much of my own blood as you need to not attack a citizen.”

The mayor was still now. It was terrifying. Javert had never seen a man look at once like a statue, and like a predator about to pounce. He held his hand out, trembling, to the mayor’s lips.

A grip like a vice steadied Javert’s wrist, threatening to break it like a twig. Javert looked away. He did not want to witness the act.  _ Mercy _ , Javert’s mind asked,  _ or punishment _ ? 

Javert’s palm stung as the mayor’s tongue licked across the cut, seeming to burn it. Javert wrenched his hand back. The cut was gone. Javert watched as the mayor came back to himself. The man stood without looking at Javert.

“The saliva... heals the wounds.”

“Don’t do that again.”

The mayor nodded. He was swaying again, but already Javert could see the colour return to the mayor’s face. Javert wiped his hand against his handkerchief, then cleaned the knife.

“Javert…”

Javert bowed, shallower than usual. He knew the mayor noticed. “Until tomorrow.”

The mayor nodded. He left in silence.

-

One summer evening, Javert watched as a merchant sold syringes to the town for opiates. He’d seen a few about recently— apparently when mixed with a liquid substance (most chose an acid of some sort,) the drug could be inserted into the body for a greater effect.

Javert bought one of the devices once the merchant had passed through both the richest and poorest parts of town. The desperate and the affluent were the greatest target markets. The syringe could pierce and suck. Theoretically, he could use it to withdraw his blood without having to feel lips against his skin. Javert did not need to use the method for long— the mayor was revealed to be Jean Valjean.

-

Valjean woke and knew instantly something was wrong.

He was aware.

He was aware. That could only mean he hadn’t died. He was waking up. He’d fallen asleep. He jolted up, finding himself on his bed, sitting now, panting. He scanned the room, his hands, his clothes. Blood. …Blood. Cosette. He was on his feet before he could think any further. The room was dark, must still be night, the blood on his shirt was not yet dry, it clung to his skin, not warm, but wet, recent.

Cosette.

The nuns had adopted her into their fold, she no longer slept in the small gardener’s hut he shared with Fauchelevent. He slid from the house, not wanting to rouse the old man, taking the shadows to avoid being seen by any nun who may be out for a night’s walk.

They had been at the nunnery for two years now. Two years since they had left the shadows of M—sur M—.

He focused on listening to the heartbeats of the convent, trying to find the one he’d been protecting as if she were his own daughter. In the focus, he nearly did not catch the smell that met him near the melon patch Fauchelevent had been tending to this season. 

The smell of death; recent, chilling, mixed with the familiar odour of newly turned dirt and cooling sweat. He was staring at the body of Fauchelevent, sat prone on the garden bench. The body was still, cold.

Valjean wanted to crumple atop the corpse, to beat life back into the man he’d adopted as a brother. He did not want to know whether this had been his fault. Whether he would cradle Fauchelevent’s head and see the puncture wounds he could not remember giving. He could still smell the blood on his own shirt. Could not bring himself to tell whether it belonged to the man beneath him. 

He had had to stop feeding from Fauchelevent a month ago, when he had watched the man faint from anemia. Valjean could not believe he had allowed himself to take so much, until he realised he had not taken more than usual; it was the simple repetitiveness that had downed the man. Fauchelevent had never quite regained his colour since Valjean had stopped. 

Fauchelevent had volunteered himself because he had preferred Valjean take from him than accidentally attacking a nun or Cosette in an unfed frenzy. A feeding once a month for two years had been enough to kill a crippled old man, and Valjean had only taken barely enough to sustain himself.

He had been tired yesterday. Barely sentient. He had felt heavy, had had a headache like he used to get when he hadn’t slept for days. His hunger had been less the churning one of his human days but like an itch setting every nerve in his body on fire. He had been put to bed by Fauchelevent. He had been starving. When he had woken up, he had been sentient and full. 

Valjean slid to his knees, feeling empty. Coming out of his panic, he started to separate smells, placing them where they belonged. The blood on his shirt belonged to the man sat before him. He had not killed a sister or his daughter. He sniffed again. Odd. The wound on Fauchelevent’s neck was not open as it would have been if it had been opened by him in a frenzied state. Valjean had seen countless victims of such attacks; bare muscle and the grim glint of white bone and sinew. Fauchelevent was clean, but for a cut in his palm. The instrument was the small knife Fauchelevent had used for cutting string to tie his vegetables to.

Valjean sat back, taking in the sight. Fauchelevent, sat calmly on the bench, surveying the garden. Knife in one hand, cut in the other. 

Valjean shook his head. No, no, this was not what God would have wanted. He had— Valjean had taken the life of this innocent man in order to sustain himself— had deceived Fauchelevent, had used him for his own gain until the very end, had literally bled the man to a slow death— Fauchelevent had offered himself to Valjean to protect the women of the convent— Javert had warned him of this. Javert had told him to find an alternate way. Instead he had relied, again, on the goodness of a man. Had thought of Fauchelevent’s consent as a good thing. 

Valjean collapsed, stricken with grief.

-

Consent. Death. Consent. Death.

Turning Javert would give the man the option to continue living. What he did with that option would be up to him. Valjean had the choice to give Javert a choice. A time limit. Heartbeat slowing, pulse weak. Valjean had to think. 

He hated the man who had turned him. Hated him with every fibre of his being. Felt the grip of anger tear at his mind. But had he died in Toulon, he would not have been able to help the people of M— sur M—. Would not have been able to rescue Cosette. Would have died a wretch, hating God. Bishop Myriel had seen him for who… what he was, and had told him God would still welcome him. He would not be consigning Javert to Godlessness, not if Myriel was right. But what applied to Valjean may not apply to Javert. Why would Javert have any reason to believe that Valjean had been trying to help? 

When Valjean still believed Javert had been the one to turn him, it had filled Valjean with hate. Every moment of his existence became a scream for revenge. Javert had many more years of hatred for Valjean to compact into such a thought. Valjean could be turning a volatile, hate-filled man into a superhuman creature. Javert could turn the other way, could turn  _ from  _ God; might use Valjean’s very existence to prove that there was no God to help him. Javert could fall into sin. 

At Arras, Valjean had put aside himself. Had spent hours going to and fro. Champmathieu. The people of his town. Champmathieu. M— sur M—. His soul, his name, his suffering. How much he could do for the town. How little he’d already done. What progress could be achieved. God’s will. Fantine. He could save so many more townspeople. 

Eventually, he had decided not to put trust in future windfalls. To gamble on what God may or may not have in store for him in the town. He could only do what he could at the time. It was not a gamble but a simple decision. To tell the truth when he was asked to tell the truth. What happened to the town was no longer his responsibility. He regretted it every day. More so when he found how the town had been crippled by the discovery of his criminality.

Javert was dying. Valjean had the option to save him. His instinct was to let Javert die. But why? Because in Javert’s position, he would rather have died. Because he would not have to live in fear of the detective. Because he did not wish Javert to turn to sin because of Valjean. Because he did not want Javert to hate his very blood. He could save Javert and Javert would have to realise what Valjean had realised. Every man could be capable of doing so. Every man could change. He could save Javert. He could let him die.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so the Amis chapters begin.

Enjolras sniffed as he walked into the Musain, his nose scrunching compulsively at the smell. When he realised what he had done, he schooled his features, but it was too late. A quick glance towards the back of the room told him the three shadows had seen, or heard, his expression of disgust. Frankly, he was disgusted with himself.

This kind of bigotry was exactly what he’d been attempting to quash within his group of companions, but it was turning out to be harder than expected, especially having grown up with his education, being told since birth to actively hate those who-

Enjolras clenched his jaw, stopping that line of thought. No. His bigotry was his own, not his family’s. He had had plenty of time to educate himself, especially to the point where he could at least enter a room without visibly reacting to the smell of damp fur. Or so he’d thought.

He attempted to send an apologetic glance at the three, but they had moved, probably outdoors, possibly to the basement, knowing their habits. Habits which, he said to himself, were their own, not of their species. Grantaire’s drinking problem was his own, not because he was a werewolf, as Enjolras’ father would have led him believe. Had led him to believe. For nigh on twenty years of his existence.

Enjolras sighed. Not the start he’d been hoping for today. He’d been actively attempting to bridge the gap, after all, between the majority-vampire-minority-werewolf relations. It wasn’t even a bad smell, his inner child could be heard whining. It was just ingrained in his muscle-memory.

No, no more excuses. He had to admit his racism, and he would have to keep admitting it so he could check it before becoming vocal. Or visible, as it stood. Enjolras went to sit at the table the three had previously vacated: whether as an inward protest, or in the hopes that maybe Grantaire might return, or perhaps because of a mix of the two.

The three had been here for a while, he could tell, and he felt doubly bad sitting in the slowly cooling seat he wouldn’t be able to warm up. He spread his papers about him on the table as if that would make up for the space so recently vacated. It was only April and, despite the spring warmth, it was still cold within the rooms; though not cold enough for the café’s owner to light a precious fire, especially with so few people hanging about. Not that the cold bothered him, not now, but he liked the feel of warmth.

Enjolras was new to the feel of being a living corpse. His parents had wanted to preserve him in his beauty, to walk the earth as an eternal youth, with the prized possession of feminine features, a slight build, agility and grace. His father had been disappointed by his high blush as a child, though post-death, he had paled significantly. ‘Magnificently’, his mother had said.

They had taken him from his crib as a mere golden-curled baby. They were fond of telling him how they had taken him from a family who would most likely disown him, from parents who would not have loved him. They had not been cruel as his human parents would have been, they liked to add. She had seemed too slim to have supported the child herself. They had done a good deed.

For his part, Enjolras was glad he had been taken. His features had remained feminine, yes, but his body had not. He and his sister had been born identical. The blood he had been given only a few years ago had allowed him to die and be reborn ‘beautiful’. But beauty was, after all, in the eye of the beholder, and for Enjolras, that had meant a smoother chest. A stronger jaw. A deeper voice. He knew he had been beautiful, but now he was perfect. His human mother could not have given him this identity, even if she had willed it for him.

Enjolras had met others like him, too, who had been born in bodies they had not found beautiful. Who had struggled for decades only to find a rejuvenated body at the doors of death. To finally be able to breathe. Only at a cost.

Enjolras had been raised on servant blood, even as a human child. He had not known any wiser, not until he had craved it, and had realised where it had come from. He had tried not feeding at all, to avoid the cravings. He had lasted more than a month until he had woken three days after blacking out, a prostitute drained at his feet. 

He did not know if she had been his only victim. He did not feel either relieved or pleased that his potential other victims would never be traced to him. There were just too many women killed for their blood to keep a track of who killed who.

Enjolras knew only too well what the world had come to for people like himself. He did not want to kill any more civilians. He couldn’t not feed. At least this way, less women died, and they could make a few francs for their blood. ‘The blood bank’, as it had come to be known. Just another form of prostitution. Just another level of decrepitating the poor. Literally bleeding them dry.

No wonder the werewolves hated them. No wonder Grantaire hated him. The wolves might not have had the most formal of educations or have a history of aristocracy, but at least they didn’t depend on eating humans for their survival, or for eternal youth. Enjolras lay his head in his hands, elbows propped on the sticky wood of the table.

Werewolf-Vampire relations were what Enjolras had been fighting for this last year. Or, rather, a trifecta of co-existence. If he had been either human or wolf, he knew he would have attempted to kill every vampire on sight. Haughty, vicious, man-eating… what positives did any of his kind bring but the personal ones he had benefitted from?

Many of his friends were vampires, some hundreds, some thousands of years old. Many had seen more bloodshed than any child like himself could comprehend. Wars, revolutions, what petty words for men, women and people of all other genders who had seen countless cities torn apart. Some fought violence with violence. Many had spent the more recent of their years in a kind of retirement that Enjolras found strength in.

Combeferre, for example, who found incredible solace in the developments in medicine, who had been teaching his human protégée, Joly, the advances in vaccinations. Enjolras was not entirely sure how old Combeferre was, but he was sure it was not the man’s first name, nor was this the first millennia he had spent teaching his students medicine. It made Enjolras smile to think of the smooth-faced old man as a modern-day Chiron. He only hoped Combeferre’s pupils met better ends than his ancient predecessors.

Jehan, too, had been cultivating themself for centuries. They had been born in America hundreds of years before colonization; had grown in a time where their tribe had accepted their identity. Jehan had watched poetry develop from roots and languages now dead. Where Combeferre could heal a wounded wrist or bloodied knee, Jehan could heal a mourning heart or soothe a crying child. They had attempted all kinds in their life: a constant experimentation of genre, gender, romance, Romance. They weaved flowers into their hair and sung songs of anger and the constancy of death.

Courfeyrac’s autobiography tended to change depending on who he was talking to. According to some he was centuries old, to others he was an Ancient prince. In every story, his personality remained the same. A romancer, a flirter, a charmer. Seductive no matter what era he had been born in.

Bossuet was only a decade older than Enjolras, a fellow youth amongst the leaders. Bossuet smiled. That was becoming rare, a genuine smile, even among the likes of Jehan and Courfeyrac. 

Enjolras was also curious as to Bossuet’s current attempts at courtship. Bossuet had already succeeded in wooing Joly enough to be able to safely incorporate him, as a human, into their group as a ‘concubine’, tagging Joly, as it were, so no other vampire would go after him. Joly had been surprisingly pleased with this development, referring to the arrangement as a kind of ‘vaccine’. Human-Vampire relations were regular. Regulated.

Enjolras was more interested in the third party to their relationship, the werewolf Musichetta. If she was successfully courted, Enjolras would have the foundations of his cause set in stone. The first Vampire-Human-Werewolf relationship in history. The problem was not Bossuet nor Joly. Musichetta, from what Enjolras had been told, enjoyed their company in private, and was already a major player in their lives. The problem was Enjolras himself, and his ridiculously bigoted reactions. Enjolras’s mind returned to the three shadows from before: Musichetta, Grantaire and Éponine, the only three werewolves they had thus far managed to convince to even step foot in the Musain. 

Neither Bossuet nor Joly would be fool enough to openly criticise Enjolras for preventing their love for their lady, but he was sure Grantaire and Éponine had enough to lecture Musichetta on for years. It was frustrating. Enjolras was pinning his entire existence on the love triangle, only for his own misguided affections to sabotage it all. It did not help that Enjolras was not ready to admit to himself that he, too, was in love with a werewolf.

-

Vampires were not public knowledge. The police, as such, assembled small teams of vampire hunters. Bahorel, for his sins, was one of those vigilante-esque members armed with holy water and stakes and sent out into the night to kill. He definitely looked the part; he was a big man, built of muscle under his dark skin, his regulation uniform comprising solely of black garments to make it easier to slip into the shadows. He could be intimidating with his height, he had grown up used to street fights and pub brawls and he knew the streets of Paris like the back of his well-scarred hand.

He just wasn’t very good at it. 

Bahorel did not particularly hate vampires, as most of the operatives in his team did. He had chosen the profession not because of any revenge, as most hunters wished for, but because he had thought being a vampire hunter sounded like a pretty charming title. He would much rather have been a vampire, but there seemed like strict regulations in becoming one (as well as the moral quandary of becoming a pseudo-cannibal) and so hunting had seemed like the easier choice to follow at the time. 

He considered this fact while he was watching his target, a vampire of medium build and with skin a shade slightly lighter than his own. The vampire worked in a factory painting fans during the day, and at a tavern hauling barrels at night. That had been what had first tipped Bahorel off; no human would be able to pull the long hours that this Feuilly could pull, first doing intricate, skilled work at the factory then switch to gruelling manual labour. Also, Bahorel could confirm, the creature was  _ beautiful _ , which tended to be the vampire  _ modus operandi. _

Bahorel wondered how he could ask the vampire if maybe he wanted to kiss as an experiment in human-vampire relations. Then he imagined the conversation they would have to have when one exposed himself as a vampire, and the other a hunter. He imagined multiple scenarios; a bad end, where Feuilly ran into the night, never to be seen again. A worse end, where Feuilly attacked Bahorel, leaving him to explain to his superiors that he had failed to both kill  _ and  _ seduce him. An even worse end where Feuilly simply killed him. A slightly better end where Feuilly turned him into his human concubine, or better yet, his vampire lover. The last scenario shattered with the thought of his boss finding him, now happily vampire-married to Feuilly and staking him in the heart. 

He sighed, downing another drink so he could hail the vampire over for a refill. The tavern was a known den for vampires, which always made covert missions hard. They could smell a human from streets away, which was why Bahorel was sat without a weapon, attempting to blend in with the crowd as if an unwitting human traveller. He’d ditched his uniform for his workman’s disguise, which would hopefully mask any unwanted smells. Over the next few weeks, he would become a repeat patron of this Musain, hoping to befriend Feuilly and maybe a couple of the leaders so as to extract as much information about the rebellion as possible.

“Are you planning on paying for any of the wine you’ve drunk tonight?” 

Bahorel laughed, patting his pocket, a few coins donated by the police to form part of his disguise clinking together. “Of course.” 

Feuilly gave him a disbelieving look but gave him a refill anyway. “It tastes better when you don’t down it in one.”

Bahorel grinned at Feuilly’s back as he watched the vampire return to his duties. Feuilly had been watching him, which meant Bahorel was in with a chance with him. He wouldn’t be lying to his superiors when he said he was cultivating a valuable relationship… and maybe if he did manage to befriend the vampire, he’d be in with a shot of joining them. 

Bahorel was, he realised as he stood to relieve himself, quite under the influence of the alcohol he’d been drinking. His superiors had told him to engage with a target tonight, which he’d done, and then advised him to go home so as to not seem like too much of an outlier.

He thought about leaving, but then one of the other men started to sing, which Bahorel could not very well resist partaking in. 

-

Grantaire was quite obviously in love with an aristocratic prick of a prince of a species he did not belong to. Éponine found it hilarious, as she was wont to do. Musichetta simply smiled, coy, when Éponine brought it up. Grantaire thought it was the worst possible outcome he could have achieved from simply finding a nice place to get pissed at.

The place had had decent wine at a tolerable price, he told himself, he had not realised the place would become the meeting place for the vampire brigade. And, he continued, just because he had warily agreed to partake in a trial community of vampire-human-werewolf relations did not mean he had sold his family out because of some infatuation.

It hadn’t even been his decision to make. Musichetta was their pack leader, after they had splintered from the bigger group. It was her who had made the final decision to join Les Amis, and yet was it her who Éponine made fun of for having an inappropriate bias? No. Of course it was only Grantaire who deserved to be shamed for the follies of the heart. 

Grantaire took a deep breath. “ Zémire et Azor.... it’s an opera. Comedy.” 

Enjolras looked up from whatever he had been writing. Something terribly important, Grantaire thought, worth his attention much more than Grantaire himself.  Somehow Grantaire had managed to gather enough courage to catch Enjolras after their meeting, bottle in one hand but not as drunk as he was pretending to be. Could pretend to be if all failed. Grantaire waved his hand around, as if trying to summon words. “Comédie-ballet mêlée de chants et de danses…”

“An opera.”

Grantaire couldn’t help but clasp his hands behind his back in a gesture of subservience at the cool look being directed at him. Had he not, he knew he would be baring elongated nails-come-claws by now, his body reacting to his fear. “An opera,” he confirmed, wondering how Enjolras could look quite so majestic simply sitting on the wooden chair before him, one leg crossed over the other in a kind of lazy, forced nonchalance.

“Well?” Enjolras asked, after a measured pause. “What about it?”

“Oh,” Grantaire cringed, this going nothing like he had imagined it panning out. “I— I have two tickets, if you… would like to join me.” Grantaire frowned, now wondering what he had made obvious. “To the opera. To see  Zémire et Azor.... The opera. Comedy. Comedy opera.” 

Enjolras looked at him, baffled.  “This is hardly the time for folly, Grantaire. We are planning a revolution. What kind of image would we project if we were seen to be going to a... a comedy ballet?” Enjolras’s usually petit frown became harsher, as if he actually had emotions. 

“You know  _ perfectly  _ well that a revolution isn’t built on the back of anger alone.” Grantaire’s tone was dismissive, but at Enjolras’ taut jaw, his slightly raised eyebrow, he continued. “Is that not what Bossuet and Combeferre provide? The smile so that you need not lower yourself to be ‘one of us’?” Grantaire had thought he might have lasted longer than thirty seconds before criticising the man he had been trying to seduce, but apparently he was not destined to do so.

“‘One of us’,” Enjolras repeated, incredulous. “Am I not attempting to bridge our families? Are we not fighting for the same cause?”

Grantaire turned around, then turned back, his hands emphasising the distance between Enjolras and the other members of their revolution. “You sit and brood in this corner of the café as if you’d prefer not to have left your house, with a face like you might suck a man dry just for talking to you and you claim to be one of us—” Grantaire bit his tongue before correcting himself. “One of them?” Grantaire pointed at the rabble currently singing some drunk song or another in the main bar-part of the building. “ _ They _ have integrated.  _ You _ have not.”

Enjolras uncrossed his legs, brushing a lock of hair from his face as he watched Grantaire. It was infuriating and terrifying that Enjolras could control his minute facial expressions to be completely unreadable to Grantaire, who was a self-professed master at tells.

“You would prefer if I played cards? Gambled? Drank and sang?”

“It would make you more-” Grantaire paused, the phrase one he had never been able to remove from his vocabulary. “...human.” He paused again, though this time intentionally, to pull out the moment of supposed insult. “As opposed to a man made of marble.”

Enjolras was constantly divine in Grantaire’s eyes, but the cold flash of emotion- pain, anger, disbelief, they were the flashes of displeased god, a wrathful other, so far from a benevolent, unseeing statue. Depictions of Apollo were never seated, the god meant to represent the youthful beauty of an athletic Greek, but Grantaire could paint him like this, he thought, one arm resting on the back of the chair, the opposite leg tucked under a rung so as to position his body as if almost lying, surrounded by the haze of the candle-lit fumes of nineteenth century Paris… he would not look out of place in the ancient villas of Italy. 

The remnants of the late spring sun were still managing to force their way in through the window besides them, illuminating the gold of Enjolras’s curled hair, making it look more akin to spun gold.

Grantaire felt ill thinking about the man. What could he possibly hope to achieve from asking this literal physical form of perfection to join him on a night to the opera, like it was some sort of bonding exercise— “What if,”  Grantaire blurted, the words out of his mouth scarcely before he could even think the idea through. “We called it the first in many werewolf-vampire bonding exercises?” 

Enjolras’ look of sudden comprehension was disheartening to say the least. “If you would… enjoy my company, I am free tomorrow evening.”

How simple, Grantaire thought. Eliminate the idea of intimacy between them and the offer sounded tolerable. 

-

“What happened to you?” Éponine asked as she sat beside Grantaire, who had been in the same seat for hours now, staring at the empty chair Enjolras had presided in earlier that evening. It was now reaching perhaps two or three in the morning, if the crowd was anything to judge by, and he wasn’t entirely sure when Enjolras had, exactly, left. Éponine sniffed, then scowled, a multitude of expressions wiping over her in quick succession. “Been fraternising with the golden boy, have we?”

“I asked him to the opera.”

“The opera?” Éponine asked, eerily mirroring the exact voice Enjolras had used those few hours ago.

“I thought it would be entertaining to ask. I thought he would know what it was. Doesn't everyone know what  Zémire et Azor is?”

“Wrong crowd?” Éponine suggested. She clapped him on the back. “Your angel doesn’t seem the opera type. Sorry it didn’t pan out.”

Grantaire looked up, despair in his eyes. “He said  _ yes _ .” 

Éponine didn’t react for a moment, needing a moment to gauge Grantaire’s reaction to what should have been a positive outcome. “Oh, well I guess I’ll need to revoke that sympathetic pat on the back.” 

“You don’t seem particularly alarmed by his saying yes.”

“What is there to be alarmed about?” Éponine asked, mostly out of a sense of duty than of actual interest.

“You don’t know what it is,” Grantaire realised. “Is it not an opera everyone has heard of?”

“Not all of us have the time, nor the inclination to have guilty pleasures, no.”

“...The— I—”  Grantaire exhaled, resigning himself to the artistic bohemian he constantly stereotyped himself as. “It is an adaptation of La Belle et la Bête.”

“You’re taking your beautiful vampire lover to see Beauty and the Beast?”

“The comedy.”

“Beauty and the Beast the comedy.”

“Yes.”

Sometimes Éponine laughed like she howled; throaty, loud, terrifying. This was one of those times.

“And to make it worse,” Grantaire sighed, knowing he was only incriminating his future self in regards to Éponine’s bullying, “He only agreed once I’d suggested it like it was a team building session. Werewolf-vampire relations.”

“Not technically a lie,” Éponine commented, checking her claws were as intimidating as possible. Grantaire had known her long enough to know it was mostly for show, to impress the young human boy that had been hanging around the area lately. Though Grantaire was sure humans didn’t react too well to the long, sharp reminders that she could kill at any second, he also found it funny to watch her feign antagonism towards Marius while simultaneously showing herself to be a prime mating specimen.

“No,” was Grantaire’s slow reply. “But it hardly says good things about my powers of seduction.”

Éponine snorted, obviously of the opinion that Grantaire was worrying for nothing and no longer willing to engage his self-deprecating self. 

Grantaire let his chin lie in his palm, elbow on table, closing his tired eyes. “You know it was Marie Antoinette who popularised nail fashion?” he asked. “Sitting, filing your nails… you’re as bad as the Queen.”

“Gunning for a fight, Grantaire?” Éponine asked, enough fight in her voice already. “Don’t you want to look good for your date?”

Grantaire let out a long, low breath, making Éponine roll her eyes. “You could ask Musichetta to go with you, make it a real pack bonding thing. Maybe some of the other Amis would go; I think Feuilly has his eye on that new one, Bahorel.”

Grantaire opened one eye to glance at her. “Would you come?” 

Éponine did not hold his eye, simply looked out towards nothing. ”Don’t like opera,” she said, simply, before getting up and leaving. Grantaire humphed, remembered his half-finished bottle of wine, and continued to finish it. 

-

This was not, Grantaire thought, exactly what he had envisioned when he had invited Enjolras. Curse his damned big mouth, and curse Éponine for her unhelpful advice.

As the curtains parted across the stage, he glanced to his left, down the row. Enjolras sat, watching the curtain mechanism with what could have been intrigue, but equally as likely, boredom. Next to him, Feuilly and Bahorel, engaged in a whispered (or, stage whispered in Bahorel’s case,) conversation about the stuffiness of the theatre. Then Musichetta, Joly and Bossuet, the three perfect patrons, waiting for the start in anticipatory silence. Then Grantaire. 

The seven of them had managed to convince Gavroche, who had managed to convince his gang of gamins, who had sway over certain seats in the theatre, to let them sit together. 

Grantaire had attempted to be a gentleman by waving Enjolras into the row first; hoping also to corner the man away from any of their other friends. Only, Bahorel being the shit that he was, saw the ‘chivalrous act’ and pushed his way past Grantaire too so that it was he, and not Grantaire, who was cornering Enjolras. Engaged as he was with Feuilly in conversation, the smaller man had followed him. By this point, Joly and Bossuet were oblivious to their surroundings enough to sit down next. Musichetta had given him a soft nudge as she passed him, sympathetic but finding humour enough in Bahorel’s action not to act upon it.

“It’s just so hot in here,” Feuilly was saying, to which Bahorel replied that Feuilly was probably better off removing certain articles of clothing. Feuilly swatted him, Bahorel grinned, and they fell into silence.

Grantaire watched the exchange and knew it should be he making the shitty comments, and Enjolras doing the swatting. He rolled his eyes. Humans. Bahorel was new, had only been hanging around for a week or so, but he was a laugh, and he’d had Feuilly in his sights from the moment he’d walked through the door, so he’d become like part of the pack almost instantly. 

Feuilly had arrived only a year ago, alone and looking for work. He was well liked by the pack and by the vampires alike; he was impartial to their in-fighting, served both groups equally, and without blinking an eye. 

When Feuilly sat with them, Musichetta and Enjolras could hold a conversation that even Courfeyrac could not coerce. They both admired him, Grantaire thought. His hardworking nature and his honesty carefully blanketing his willingness to fight to make him seem unsuspecting. 

Feuilly was the exact opposite of Grantaire. Hardworking, honest, docile. They were perhaps the three greatest antonyms Grantaire could have used to describe himself, and God knew neither the man Grantaire loved nor the woman he venerated came close to  _ admiring  _ him.

There was a short pang of jealousy that Grantaire was quick to smother. He held nothing against Feuilly, he was a great man, he told a sharper joke than even Bahorel, and gave good consolatory pats on the back. Grantaire valued their friendship. He liked Feuilly. 

Bahorel had almost been a Godsend, in Grantaire’s eyes. For the last year, Grantaire had been keenly aware of just how  _ perfect  _ Feuilly was for Enjolras; their ideals matched, they dealt with arguments by systematically sorting through their mismatched thoughts, they saw a similar future for their country. If Grantaire had not had a slight bias, he might have attempted to force the two together for how perfect they were.

Grantaire’s clenched jaw softened as Bahorel touched his hand to Feuilly’s, a movement uncharacteristically shy for the brazen man. When Feuilly did not move his hand, simply kept his eyes on the stage with a secret smile, Grantaire let himself slouch in his seat. It was good that the two were quick to become close. That they were having this innocent romance. 

It vexed him that after only six days, they’d found their fairytale romance, and after six years, Enjolras still mostly thought of Grantaire as the local drunkard. He barely heard the first act of the opera, still thinking of Bahorel’s hand on Feuilly’s, and how Enjolras’ lay just next to Bahorel’s left. Would he have had the courage to touch Enjolras’ hand as the curtain rose? No, most likely not. Definitely not. 

The theatre was packed, sweaty. Every time someone moved in their seat, he could hear it. Every mutter, every whisper, every secreted release of flatulence. Every heartbeat, however fast. He wondered what Enjolras thought of Grantaire’s heart; how it raced when Enjolras caught him staring. Probably assumed Grantaire was scared; feared him, or was gunning for a fight.

Grantaire licked his lips. Goddamn super-hearing creatures. “Bahorel’s an arse,” he said during a particularly loud crash of the cymbals. Musichetta tittered beside him, but Bossuet seemed not to notice, wincing instead at a screechy violin. Grantaire grinned, until he caught sight of Enjolras, on the end of their group, hands pressed against his ears.

Super-hearing. Opera. Full orchestra. Enclosed space. Reverberation. 

_ God _ , he was an  _ idiot _ . The sounds were loud for Grantaire, he could barely hear himself think over the beat of the drums and the pitch of the lead’s voice, yet he knew the vampires’ hearing superseded the werewolves’ — and that as a newly turned creature, Enjolras would still be learning to tune certain sounds out. God, Bossuet was still in pain after a decade to get used to it… Grantaire ground his eyes shut and slid back in his seat, listening as the dancers pranced about on stage, and unsuspecting humans laughed at the comedy before them. God, he was an idiot. God, God, God...

-

Bahorel did not have a desk at the Préfecture de Police, nor would any of the officers there have recognised him had he walked in; instead, to receive his missions and to give his reports, there was a cloak-and-dagger procedure wherein a gamin might be sent to your rented apartment, telling you where abouts to wait for another gamin with another note.

Tonight, Bahorel was waiting on the steps of the Musain, twiddling with a pamphlet he had been given outside of the theatre the night before. On the pamphlet, (an advert for another theatre’s latest production,) was an illustration of a statue of an Ancient that Bahorel recognised from Le Jardin du Luxenburg. Beside the image was a small ‘14’, written in pencil to look like a simple printing error. He released the pamphlet into the wind for the weather to destroy.

It was almost laughable how close the Musain was to the Préfecture de Police— a short stroll down Boulevard Saint-Michel and you were on the front doorstep of the police. Bahorel glanced down that way, hands behind his head, fingers interlocked in his hair before turning the opposite way, heading towards the gardens.

As he passed tall trees shading parasol-holding ladies and long-stretches of the greenest shade of grass, he wondered how many of the single men in the park were undercover police spies, waiting to collect their orders, and how many were the criminals they were attempting to catch, using the park to select their next victim.

Bahorel counted the benches as he walked, looking for the fourteenth. Once he’d reached the tenth, he looked up to find the one he’d been directed to occupied. If Bahorel had not been the confident man that he was, he might have been annoyed that the man had chosen the only bench Bahorel needed, out of all the empty benches in the park. For anyone other than he, the act of sitting next to the man on the only occupied bench out of the hundreds in the park might have been a trial. An assay of their social abilities. 

As it was, Bahorel sat down, folding his arms across his breast. For a moment, he sat, waiting for any kind of negative reaction. Once they had passed through the minute’s silence, he turned to the man and held out his hand. “Bahorel.”

The man had not moved from his revelry. He stared, glassy-eyed, at a row of trees across the path from them, apparently at nothing. 

Bahorel let his open palm close with a shrug. He took a moment more to study the man, thinking he would not mind, what with the distant gaze and the lack of a formal introduction. The man was young, just barely out of boyishness, skin a light brown, black hair once cropped close now allowed to grow out in tight natural curls. He looked like an aristocrat that had been left out in the rain. Out of his family’s pocket, perhaps. Out of father’s favour. He looked like many of the young men Enjolras tended to dig out. Maybe he was. Bahorel stretched his neck further forwards by an inch, trying to catch a more forward-facing view of the man.

“It strikes me that we may have met before.” Bahorel broke into a grin. “The baron, right? Grantaire thought your name was hilarious.” 

At the title, the man had flinched, the only evidence Bahorel had that the man was alive. Bahorel re-professed his hand. “Bahorel, Baron…?”

“Pontmercy. ...Marius.” Marius offered his own hand, though did not give their handshake nearly as much vigour as Bahorel. 

Bahorel hoped Marius was in an unaware-enough mindset that he did not notice his wiping the leftovers of Marius’s clammy hand onto his breeches. “So, Marius, what ails you on this fine spring morning?”

Marius sighed but said nothing more. When it grew apparent that the sigh had not just been for dramatic effect and the silence would be permanent if left that way, Bahorel grew bored of waiting for a reply. He leaned forwards, rested his elbows on his knees, his chin in his palms. “Revolution got you down? Or… let me think. Bahorel’s got a memory like an elephant.” 

He trickled through everything he’d overheard from simply having a couple of drinks at the Musain, sorting relevant and irrelevant comments, highlighting anything to do with one Baron Pontmercy. A flash, a word,  _ handkerchief _ . He glanced at the man and smiled, successful. In Marius’ left hand was a sheer white handkerchief, gripped tight. “A memento of a lover?” Marius’ grip lightened a touch; enough to allow Bahorel a glimpse at the embroidered letters. “UF. Urbaine? Ultime? U…” He scratched his nose. There were very few U names. “Ulrich?” 

“ _ Ursula _ ,” Marius corrected, “My angel, Ursula.”

“Oh,” Bahorel replied, fairly taken aback by Marius’ angel’s gender. He’d taken it almost for granted that those at the Musain had  _ other _ tastes, whether that regarded their sustenance or their sexuality. “So she’s a human, then? Said no to the prowler of the night?”

Marius shook his head, softly. “She does not know.”

Bahorel clapped him on the back, sending a hearty shock through the man. “That’s rough, friend.” 

“Yes. Her father, he is one of us, but does not engage with anyone of our kind.”

“A vampire with a human daughter. The romantic cliché might just kill me.” Bahorel chuckled to imagine father and daughter; the former a hulking figure in darkness, the latter an angel in white. When Marius only fell deeper into his melancholy, Bahorel sat back on the bench. “Pontmercy, hm. Not a name I am familiar with.”

Marius nodded, melancholic. “My grandfather is Monsieur Gillenormand.”

This made Bahorel sit up, eyes wide. “As in  _ the  _ Monsieur Gillenormand?”

Marius nodded again. Bahorel let out a low whistle. An aristocrat indeed, this Pontmercy. Grandson of the single most prolific vampire aristocrats in Paris. Gillenormand was perhaps the eldest man on earth that Bahorel knew of, making this Marius a great-great-great to the power of infinite. But, Bahorel thought, perhaps of mixed blood. A product of the great family, born of one of the human line kept regulated by Gillenormand himself so as to pass genes, but tainted by foreign blood. 

“My father,” Marius said, “Was a Colonel, and later Baron. He and my mother fell in love, but he was dark of skin, unattractive to my grandfather.” Bahorel rolled his eyes in a snide gesture of understanding. “But my mother was already pregnant, and she was my grandfather’s favourite child of her line, and so I was allowed to enter the world.”

“Let me hazard a guess— neither of your parents survived this.”

Marius again sighed, as if physically attempting to rid every ounce of oxygen in his body. “I apologise, I must come across an incredibly callous fool, revealing my life’s history to you, a stranger.”

“A friend,” Bahorel said with a wave of the hand, dismissing Marius’ pessimism. “A friend of a friend is a friend to me.”

Finally, Marius glanced at Bahorel with a swell of tears in his eye. “Truly?”

Bahorel nodded. There was, after all, the pang of guilt within his breast, knowing he had only asked Marius for his history so as to cultivate a greater view of the Musain’s inhabitants, and to befriend the grandson of Gillenormand by accident was an indescribable achievement. “Truly,” he said, thinking not of Marius, or caring much that he would one day betray the boy, but of Feuilly, and what it would be to betray them all.

“A friend,” Marius said, clutching the handkerchief tighter. Marius opened his mouth to continue, but paused and glanced up just as a boy appeared beside them, hands in his pockets. 

“One of you’s B?” 

“Big B, that’s me,” Bahorel said as he rooted in his pocket for a coin, exchanging it for the note. Bahorel ripped it open as he watched the boy scamper off. Once the boy had gone, he scanned the words with a calm he couldn’t quite feel. He needed to pretend the note was a trifle, and not something that could get him killed. He hoped Marius was too in love with his angel to notice the transaction between police-hired gamin and police-hired vampire killer happening right before his eyes.

_ ‘The filthy malpractices that ran rampant among the urinals of Paris are a breeding ground of revolutionary thought. These pederasts, so beyond the law to be almost protected by it would be the first to succumb to dissident thought.’ _

Bahorel almost wanted to give up his cover, simply to read the letter to Marius. It was almost too good to be true, the wording of the letter conflating homosexuality with revolutionary thought. 

_ Let us all be pederasts, then! _ Bahorel thought, with a smidge of pride. The Inspector had not been wrong, after all, most of the men he knew in the  _ Amis  _ could not be construed as the ‘going home to a loving wife’ type. Present company excluded, of course.

_ ‘You shall disguise yourself as one of those misguided wretches offering himself so as to determine whether this inquiry should be pursued further. Ensure you do not incriminate yourself.”  _

The missive wasn’t signed, but it was recognisable instantly. Inspector Javert. 

“I’m a wanted man,” Bahorel declared. “My boss finally found out where I live, and he’s coming for me.” His fake excuses seemed to fall on deaf ears. “ _ Á plus tard _ , Baron. I will return to help you deal with your angel some other time.” 

Mention of Ursula brought Marius’ still-wet eyes eyes up, the gleam radiating thankfulness. “ _ Á plus tard _ , friend.”

Bahorel stood, smiled, waved and left, hands in his pockets gripping the note in a tight fist.  _ Friend. _


	5. Chapter 5

“Commitment.” Enjolras shrugged. “There’s your answer.”

“You endured three hours of  _ opera _ -”

Courfeyrac held up a hand. “His words were ‘bad opera’, Combeferre, don’t be a stingy.”

“You endured three hours of,” Combeferre glanced at Courfeyrac, “ _ Bad _ opera, because of… ‘commitment’?”

“Grantaire, and thus, by extension, the werewolves, requested my presence at an evening event. I am committed to making sure our families bond well. Thus, I endured three hours of…” He too glanced at Courfeyrac, “ _ Bad  _ opera, because I wished to show that commitment to Grantaire. To Musichetta. To our fellow vampire and human friends.”

“But Bossuet says R left,” Courfeyrac said, swinging his legs as he sat atop one of the Musain’s tables, Combeferre sat in a chair to his right, Enjolras in a chair to his left, both facing him. “If he was the one to invite you, why did he leave at the intermission?”

At this, Enjolras’ expression of composure started to decompose. “I don’t know.”

“And you say you were ignored the entire evening?” Combeferre pushed his spectacles further up the bridge of his nose, a trait he revealed when he was feeling provocative.

“‘Ignored’ is not the word I used. I am aware of Bahorel and Feuilly’s… amours, perhaps more than I could wish after a night spent listening to them whisper their…” Enjolras winced. “‘Sweet nothings’ to one another. I do not wish to seem ungrateful for the invite because I happened to be sat apart from the rest of the group.”

“And so you stayed to the end despite being distanced from the group by our young lovers, and despite your host leaving half-way.”

“Less than half-way,” Enjolras corrected. “He left after the third act begun, though we saw him in the intermission, face red from alcohol.”

“‘Commitment’,” Courfeyrac said, after a beat, his voice full of admiration. “Well then, hats off to our fearless leader, who suffered through a most terrible night in the name of keeping up good relations.

Combeferre seemed lost in thought for a moment and Enjolras, picking up on this (but also wanting to derail Courfeyrac’s before he could turn his attention to the connotations of ‘commitment’ and question Enjolras’s heart,) leant closer to his friend. “What is the matter, Combeferre?”

Combeferre’s lip raised slightly in a smile as he touched his finger to the wire bridge of his glasses. “I have always wanted to see  _ Zémire et Azor. _ I am sad to know that the current production is bad, else I might have tried to acquire tickets for myself.”

Somehow, Enjolras’ spirits were both deflated and lifted in one motion. He might have known of Combeferre’s passion for the theatre, and either invited the man along to begin with, or have given a more praising review, even if Combeferre were to hate it himself. But, as ever with Combeferre, his frank but gentle words, touched with humour, could make Enjolras forget, for just a moment, the disappointment he had felt about the trip, and it’s wasted potential on both the public and private fronts.

“Combeferre, you should have said, I might have…” But no, Enjolras thought, he would not have thought to invite Combeferre because he had been under the impression that the trip was to be a private affair between himself and Grantaire until he had seen the group of Amis amassed outside the Musain, waiting to travel together to the show. Grantaire had managed to secure not just the two tickets promised, but seven through Éponine’s brother, the pup Gavroche. Which had been… positive in that Bossuet could entertain his two guests, and that Bahorel and Feuilly could meet outside the café, seemingly the only place they ever saw one-another, but…

But. Enjolras was cultivating a sense of selfishness within him that, now he had identified it, would have to be rooted out. Selfishness in a leader attempting to bridge species? Unthinkable. Irresponsible. He would have to quash his influencing desires so as to focus on leadership. “We should go again. It might be better in the right company.” Combeferre, the sweet man that he was, smiled and nodded, taking up the offer.

\- 

“There is a police agent amongst us.” Enjolras allowed the wave of whispers to spread around the room before continuing. “Perhaps more than one. A note from police to spy was intercepted en route to a patron of the musain.”

A hand shot up and Enjolras nodded, allowing the question. “How did you know it was a police note?”

Enjolras held up the paper, holding it between thumb and forefinger like it might hurt him just to hold it. “It smells, monsieur, like Inspector Javert.”

Another rush of whispers. Another hand. “But does he not mask his scent? Is that not why he is so fearsome?”

Enjolras nodded. So at least some were paying attention. He motioned towards the door, from which a flash of fur bounded, rolled, and changed, revealing the grinning Gavroche, stark naked and with his hands on his hips. “I am the pup Gav, and I am your saviour!”

There was a round of encouraging applause, mixed with laughter and whoops from some of those who knew Gavroche’s love of theatrics. 

Éponine threw a bundle of cloth at her brother, who unwrapped it to reveal his recently-discarded clothes, having turned to mutt simply for his entrance. Then, after pulling on his rags, he continued. “Dear Inspector mixes his smells, very clever, likes to use wolfsbane and frankincense to make us turn head before smelling deeper. But-” Gavroche grabbed the paper from Enjolras and took a deep whiff. “Inspector made a mistake, didn’t he. Snuff, probably got it out a second too early to ‘gratulate himself for his good work, left the faintest of smells.” 

Feuilly was next to put up his hand. “So the faintest smell of snuff means it’s a letter from Javert instead of from a friend of a friend?” Heads turned to Feuilly, as well as a disapproving mutter. Enjolras held up a hand to silence the crowd. 

“Well?” he asked Gavroche.

“Too good at his job,” Gavroche said. “Writing a letter without leaving your own personal muff? Inspector’s the only one good enough to be invisible in his letters. He’s been training his hunter buddies good, but none of them can trick this wolf.” Gavroche stabbed his chest with his thumb, proud as he was given approving smiles from the group.

“And if he  _ has _ trained his men to be as good as he? Like you say, he is the best at his job. I doubt he would leave the scent of snuff near his work.” Feuilly once again turned heads.

Gavroche glared at Feuilly for a beat, brows meeting in the middle. Then, finding what he wanted, shrugged. “Then no matter, no one else got reason to be hiding his scent but the police, Inspector J or not.”

This explanation satisfying Feuilly, the room’s morale started to lift, and whispers of punishment for whatever spy may dare enter started to spread. Groups of faces started to investigate others, suspicion creeping on members both new and old.

“Quiet.” Enjolras’ voice was barely raised, yet there was instantaneous silence. “I will not see this group of friends torn apart by suspicion. We will use our minds in a productive manner, not sell out our friends and only help those who wish to see us harmed.”

Wariness slowly turned to acceptance, and there was no further vocalisation of doubt among those in the room.

Enjolras sensed Grantaire’s approach and steeled himself, not letting himself react when Grantaire put a firm hand on Enjolras’ arm, just below the shoulder. Grantaire did not bother whispering in the room, though he did imply secrecy by lowering his voice and speaking near enough to Enjolras’ ear that he could feel the breath. To hide any irregularity of his expression, Enjolras lowered his eyes to Grantaire’s arm, which was quickly removed. 

Enjolras glanced about the room of cocked heads and intrigued raised eyebrows, but sensing that war would not break out in his absence, nodded. “We will take a five minute break to dispel tension. When I return, we will discuss what our next actions will be.” He indicated to Combeferre and Courfeyrac that they would be in charge while he left, and the two came to stand in his place at the head of the table, already starting to field questions from the more eager.

Enjolras followed Grantaire to the back room usually only reserved for meetings with the core members of les amis, now empty but for the crates of wine edging the room.

Enjolras sat himself in his customary position at the table, but regretted his custom when Grantaire stood before him, not sitting as Enjolras had assumed he might. Enjolras felt strangely vulnerable in the position, with Grantaire above him, and so he focused on appearing stoic. “Well?” he asked when Grantaire did not immediately speak.

“The spy,” Grantaire said. “You will not be willing to think it, so I will.”

“Think what?” Enjolras probed, already on edge at having been accused of turning a blind eye. 

Grantaire considered his next words for a beat. Then he nodded to himself, pushing out his words. “Feuilly. It must be Feuilly.”

“Grantaire…”

“I know he, you and Musichetta get on well, but that’s just the thing: he’s new to Paris, to the group, and he’s already befriended the upper echelon?”

“There is no hierarchy in this group,” was Enjolras’ stock response, still reeling from Grantaire’s suggestion. Once Grantaire had made his feelings clear about that phrase, Enjolras probed himself, questioning why he had leapt to defence first instead of treating the accusation with logic. “Do you have any other evidence to back up your claim?”

“He’s clever. He asks all of the right questions. Even back there, he was undermining Gavroche, making everyone doubt an informant everyone has trusted since the child was born. Not to mention him being a werewolf? Undermining our voices, tearing the group apart… Feuilly… he’s too good to be true.”

“You’re attempting to pin guilt on a man because you consider him ‘too good to be true’?” Enjolras took the opportunity to stand, feeling it might annunciate his disbelief. “If you have nothing further to say, I’m going back to the meeting.”

Grantaire wheeled, following Enjolras to the door and grabbing him by the arm. Enjolras, shocked, pulled away with violence, leaving Grantaire with stormclouds in his eyes. Grantaire growled, deep, his displeasure at his treatment obvious. “He has no purpose here! He must be the spy!”

“Tell me, Grantaire, what is  _ your _ purpose here?”

A laugh caught in Grantaire’s throat. “You invited me. You welcomed me in.  _ You _ are my purpose here.”

“But now you dare to question the obedience of those with more purpose than you?”

“You raise this now? The others do not seem to find my presence so offensive!”

“ _ They _ tolerate you because of your humour.” Enjolras ripped his eyes from Grantaire, turning instead to the door. “You provide obedience to neither the symbols of authority  _ nor  _ the revolution. You debauch both with your uncooperative presence. You are a drunkard and I, for one, feel you are good for nothing.” 

Grantaire raised his eyes, and suddenly realised he had unconsciously dipped his head in deference of Enjolras’ superiority. While before he had avoided Enjolras’ eye from simple uncomfort in the man’s presence, this feeling was new. This was behaviour reserved only for his pack leader, for Musichetta. Grantaire found difficulty swallowing. Betrayal of Musichetta warred with a stab of reality, that his love for Enjolras really was unreciprocated. 

That Enjolras held Grantaire in low esteem was not news, but his frank dismissal, Enjolras using  _ opinion _ to drive his feeling home… Grantaire took in a deep breath, contemplated screaming until his lungs burned, then let out his breath in a soundless sigh. He reached around Enjolras, enjoying the proximity one last time before he opened the door, slipped through the crowds of the main hall and left into streets lit only by the empty sky of the crescent moon above him.

Enjolras followed him midway through the room before being stopped by Feuilly. “Are you okay?”

Enjolras focused on the man through the haze he could feel descending upon him. Enjolras cleared his throat, showed a quick smile and pulled from Feuilly’s grip. “Perfectly.”

-

Bahorel was not a particularly small man, nor was he a very unforgettable one. Thus, he got quite a few strange looks as he stood in the corner of a public urinal, attempting to look ever-so-slightly debauched and ripe for the taking. Just the thought of the words made him snort, ruining a good ten minute’s worth of practise to seem serious.

“Then I says- then I says to ‘im-” A glance at the three men who’d entered the toilets told Bahorel he was best not to provoke them. The leader was dressed in a workman’s muddied clothes and sported a thick beard. The two beside him were similarly dressed and bearded, though slightly less groomed. Thinking desperately of running water, he made himself turn towards the urinal and started to pee. 

“-You one of those boys, looking for a bit’er business?” Bahorel kept his eyes down, hoping to God as the pair accompanying the talker sniggered. “‘Oh m’sieur’ he said, ‘take me right here sir, discount fer yer ‘cos yer such a man-’” Bahorel exhaled, relieved they had not been referring to him. “So there I was, trousers down m’ankles, cock out in the middle of the- middle of the bloody urinal-” The man was having difficult continuing around his own laughter, “then he turns to me, this- this kid, I’m talking, I’m sayin’ he was, sixteen, looked like he hadn’t even seen a bloody razor, he turns to me and he puts on this face, all serious and he says ‘M’seuir, you’re under arrest. I’m a policeman and you’re attempting to deface this public urinal.’”

The two men were in hysterics, doubled over as the speaker continued his impression of the young policeman. Bahorel kept his eyes down, a pit forming within his stomach.

“Yer a copper? I asked, still, still waving it around, still out for the world to see and- and he’s all ‘pederasts like you will not be tolerated-’ and I, oh you should have seen it, I says to him, I says ‘yer a copper? Far’s I see it, yer just cop-u-lated with me. Oh he went white as pissing snow ‘e did, ‘we did nothing of the sort,’ he says, ‘pants ‘round your ankles what you call copulation old man?’ and so now, now I’m laughing, got the kid all in a bind and I says to him, that’s not what your bosses are gonna hear when I tells them you enjoyed it. Pretty boy like you, only one reason you got sent in here. Your first job? and the boy goes all quiet, nods, dunn’e. Yeah. Boy like you practically begging to be taken seriously? Took yer job too serious? Couldn’t say no when I got all close?”

Bahorel could picture the boy they were talking about. Javert’s voice rang loud in his ears. ‘ _ Ensure you do not incriminate yourself.’  _ This had been the boy, then, the inspector was referring to. He had heard many such case from those spies sent to root out the pederasts; that those criminals they attempted to catch in the act would argue the case that it had been they who had been attacked in the toilets by the eager policeman and would ask for copious monetary compensation. 

“Yer a big lad, ain’t ye?” 

Bahorel smiled at the three men, who had turned their attentions to him. “Gotta store me liquor somewhere, ain’t I?” This elicited a good response from the men.

“Drink too much’n you’ll piss forever,” the man at the centre, the dubbed leader, said. “You got a big bladder?”

Bahorel, feeling rather scrutinised, finished and tucked himself back in, all the while attempting a genial, non-suspicious expression. He nodded to them as he passed, going for the door. “‘Evening.”

As he passed, the henchman to the leader’s left sniffed, then raised an eyebrow. “Friend of Grantaire?”

Bahorel felt his heart sink. “Know ‘im, yeah. You his friends?”

“You could call us that,” the leader said, “More like family.”

“Oh. I… He has never…” Bahorel wondered how best to tread through a political minefield he did not have enough knowledge of. “We don’t talk much,” he settled for. “Good man. Drinks like a fish.”

“Sounds like he ain’t changed much,” henchman to the right said, grinning in a way Bahorel suspected was only to show off his teeth, a pearly white glem of sharp edges.

“You tell him we said hello, yeah? That we still think of him. Him, and those two bitches he follows.”

Bahorel sighed. He had been so close. He could see the street from where he stood. 

He stepped towards the men, still smiling. “I’ll do that,” he said, offering out his right hand to shake the leader’s. The leader mirrored him, clasping Bahorel’s hand in a firm grip. Bahorel widened his smile, brought his left fist up and punched the man squarely in the nose. Then he kicked the man in the groin, throwing him to the ground, eliciting a very satisfying whine of pain from the man. 

The two henchmen stood in shock for a moment before rippling into their wolf form, long claws clacking on the tiled floor. There was only a beat for Bahorel to consider his game plan before the beasts lunged— Bahorel allowed himself to be tackled to the floor, more able to break his fall and avoid significant damage to the back of his skull that was as the two much-larger-than-expected beasts fell upon him. Bahorel struggled, his might just enough to push one wolf away with his hands, the other he lifted and kicked back with his feet. Preoccupied as he was with the struggle, he did not notice the leader pick himself up and transform into a mass of black, eyes brimming with hatred. Bahorel did not notice this, could not protect himself when the lead wolf prowled, eyed his line of attack, and leapt, teeth sinking into Bahorel’s neck.

-

R had set himself up in a café a few streets from the Musain in the past week, hardly leaving his seat but to relieve himself or to empty his stomach in the alley behind the café. He had not returned home, he had not stepped out of the café further than the doorpost, he had not seen daylight. He had counted the hours by wine bottle, by the length of a candle, by the rowdiness of the crowd around himself. He had thus fully resigned himself to the local drunk. He had coin, at least, and so the innkeeper was more than happy to mop around his live-in guest, providing bottle after bottle as the coins kept appearing.

Grantaire, amongst this, had not time to think of much else but his misery, surviving on nothing but self pity and the alcohol that was slowly replacing his blood. His mood had worsened, so much so that any humour he had had when he walked in, his rancorous banter with the tavern’s girls, had faded by the third day into silence, and no patron had heard him say anything further than the occasional muttering of what they thought might be “good for nothing.” This, of course, became the food of much rumour, the most common of which being that the young man had been laid off his job, or that his wife had emptied him out of their house. Either way, without his comedy, they took almost no interest in him, nor did they attempt to disturb his corner of the room. 

His senses washed almost clean by the constant alcoholic fume he now emitted, he prepared to sleep, head on his arms. He did not look up when the doors crashed open; drunk men were rowdy with the doors on a constant basis. His interest was piqued when the room fell to silence. Slow, thudding footsteps coming towards him, followed by the distinct drag of a heavy weight. Grantaire realised he could not smell further than his own unwashed armpits and peremptorily flinched. He would have to look up to know whether the footsteps meant harm. He considered feigning sleep, but decided he would prefer to stare his imminent doom in the face.

It took a good moment for the room to stop lurching enough for his eyes to adjust and focus enough on the man before him before he could break out in a good clean cold sweat. His eyes dropped to the dead weight on the floor and he gulped.

-

Feuilly, leaning as he was against the bar, had a good eye on all those who entered the Musain. Between pouring men and women their alcohol and handing out bottles, he spent the time watching people interact, keeping an eye on the movements of all those he found interesting. As his eyes flicked between groups, he picked between those he knew and those he didn’t, whether travellers in off the street, or old regulars he had not yet been acquainted with.

He glanced Enjolras, more often than not sat between Courfeyrac and Combeferre, their heads down over some document, Marius sometimes perched beside Courfeyrac when persuaded to come. He glanced Musichetta, accompanied by Joly, Bossuet and sometimes Éponine. He glanced Jehan, floating between the groups, tacked on to whichever conversation they found most interesting, though mostly with their notebook out and paying little attention to whatever was being said above them. He glanced the empty seat towards the back where Grantaire should have been, left alone as if a haunted space, waiting for its owner to return. He glanced the bar stool before him, occupied by some stranger Feuilly had no interest in, where Bahorel usually sat. 

Feuilly lost his grip on the glass he was cleaning and swore as it smashed at his feet, the sound barely registering above the crowd. As he swept the shards of glass with a broom, he kept swearing in his head to drown out the near-constant voice that told him that Bahorel had, in some way, betrayed him. It had been a week since Bahorel had disappeared without a word, the day after they had gone to the theatre together.

Feuilly had been nonchalant the first evening Bahorel had not showed up, overhearing Marius say how Bahorel’s boss had found out that he had been skipping work. It had been a surprise to learn Bahorel had a job, but also quite pleasing to know the man did not simply waste all his time on alcohol. Feuilly, for one, had not just been hoping for a bedmate, but had quickly realised that he had been having true affections for Bahorel. Quite thankfully, Bahorel’s reciprocation had been very clear from the outset. Feuilly had just assumed they were taking it slow out of a mutual desire to fan the spark into fire. There should have been no problem.

Feuilly gathered the pieces of glass and disposed of them with a slight touch more anger than necessary. But now Bahorel had disappeared to who knew where, leaving Feuilly feeling not just foolish, but… heartsick. It made every job just that little bit harder, and concentrating was becoming a task in itself. Imagining what Bahorel could be up to, wherever he was, was like a kind of self-inflicted torture. Perhaps Bahorel had bored of this place and had simply moved on, quick as how he had arrived. Perhaps there was another Feuilly out there, sat next to Bahorel at a theatre. Perhaps there were many. The stranger in Bahorel’s seat hailed him and Feuilly refilled his glass without a smile. Perhaps he was busy at work, making up for all the hours he had missed. Perhaps he was hurt. 

A crash from the other end of the room made him look up. Éponine was stood, her hackles evidently raised. Musichetta’s hand was on Éponine’s arm, not just comforting but restraining. Below her, on the floor, Enjolras, clutching his cheek, blood between his fingers. Feuilly felt the mood in the room ice over. Mutterings of dissent, insults whispered about Éponine’s breed, ‘told you so’s… 

Feuilly took himself from behind the bar, standing beside the group. “What happened?” he asked, his tone as neutral as possible.

“Your fucking king kicked Grantaire to the curb, that’s what.”

Feuilly faced Enjolras, still on the floor, eyes lowered. So the truth, then. “Why?”

Enjolras licked his lips before answering. “He brought unfounded accusations about members of our group to me. I cannot tolerate that kind of behaviour in a group designed to root out rumours.” 

“So you told him he was a useless sack of shit and told him to piss off?” Éponine went to attack again but was this time bodily held back by Musichetta. “He’s alone out there, and you— you haven’t even blinked an eye about it, have you. He’s not— we’re not  _ supposed  _ to be alone— he’ll—” Words failing, she turned to Musichetta, who had, Feulliy realised, been wearing an expression of disgust for Enjolras.

“You should have known better,” Musichetta told Enjolras. “Especially so close to…”

Enjolras was, it seemed, holding back his emotion. Feuilly could see evidence of true regret on Enjolras’ face, possibly even the beginnings of tears. Feuilly nodded. 

“Enjolras evidently regrets his decision. Éponine, you can see he is punishing himself more than your violence can hurt him.”

Éponine, breathing heavily, kept Enjolras pinned to the floor with her stare for ten… twenty… thirty seconds before ripping herself away from Musichetta’s grip and out the door. Musichetta sent her boys a brief look before following, leaving Courfeyrac and Combeferre to help Enjolras up off the floor. Feuilly passed Enjolras his handkerchief and the man wiped the blood from his cheek with it before handing it back. Feuilly bristled at the behaviour. Enjolras, in a time of weakness, had evidently let his body run by instinct than by thought and had returned to treating those about him as his family’s servants, so used to being handed whatever he needed and disposing it without thought. 

_ Dangerous _ , Feuilly’s mind screamed. Enjolras, in this state, was dangerous. To the group. To the public. A glance at Combeferre told him that he was not alone in the thought. They shared a nod while Courfeyrac took Enjolras’s arm, leading the leader back to his room.

Once the pair had left, Feuilly clapped his hands. “Show’s over,” he said, waiting for the café to fall back into its routine before heading to the back room with Combeferre, grabbing a bottle of wine as he went, Joly and Bossuet following behind.

-

“It’s their time of the month,” Joly said, “The full moon is tomorrow, and it’s the first time Grantaire’ll be alone during the transition. It’s not safe for him, especially if, as Ép thinks, he’s mindless from drink.”

Feuilly scratched a fingernail against the table, trying to get rid of some unseen spot of dirt. “Can Musichetta and Éponine not find him somehow?”

“They rely on smell,” Bossuet explained. “And their sense is stronger than even ours. They’ve been around the area, trying to find even lingering tracks, but if he’s still in Paris, he’s very likely holed up in some drink house, fuming from the amount he’s drank.”

“So there’s a likelihood,” Combeferre started, hesitantly, “That he does not know how soon the full moon is, and might transform in public?”

“‘Chetta always joked about how R couldn’t tell the date on the best of days,” Joly said, with a sad smile. The smile faltered and his lip quivered as he neared tears. “If… if they see him, if he’s alone and they see him, they’ll…”

Bossuet put his arms around Joly, allowing the man to cry. Bossuet looked as if he were going that way himself. 

“They probably won’t be much help,” Feuilly said to himself, before opening up his thoughts to the group. “Musichetta, Éponine, they’re on edge. Their senses… heighten nearer the moon?” Bossuet nodded. “And they still can’t sense him. And we’re going on the assumption that he’s still alive?” The group was silent. “Well... we have nothing to say he isn’t.” Feuilly turned to Combeferre. “And Enjolras? He honestly regrets what he said to Grantaire?”

Combeferre looked taken aback for a moment, sharing a look with Bossuet. “You cannot mean you do not know…?” Feuilly’s alarm raised when Joly’s sadness seemed to flip, almost instantly, into a disbelieving laugh. 

“Know what?” Feuilly asked, brain whirring through conspiracy theories.

“Enjolras,” Combeferre said, “He’s in love with Grantaire.”

Feuilly confirmed this with a look about the room, swore, once, then took a deep gulp of wine from the bottle. “Grantaire?”

“The same,” Bossuet confirmed.

“And everyone knows this?”

“Of course everyone knows it,” Joly said, voice muffled by Bossuet’s clothes. “Haven’t you seen them?”

“At each other’s throats all the time?” Was Feuilly’s first response, before looking beyond the harsh words. He pinched the bridge of his nose.  _ Obviously _ . 

“They both think it could never be reciprocated,” Combeferre said, arms crossed. “Telling either otherwise is a nightmare, frankly put.” Feuilly looked at the man’s face for a good second before passing the bottle of wine, from which Combeferre drank an impressive gulp.

“And so Enjolras told Grantaire he was useless because…?”

“My best guess is that he probably felt his feelings for Grantaire were coming between his ideals and his actions. Grantaire most likely made one mistake, usually easily forgiven, which made it easier for Enjolras to excuse his harsh dismissal.”

“And Grantaire?”

“Could only take so many dismissals to break his heart.” Joly sniffed, then came out of his hug with Bossuet, wiping his eyes. “If they could just talk,” he said, voice small. 

“This is ridiculous.” Feuilly took back the bottle and drank while he thought. “And now Enjolras is self-imploding, Grantaire is missing, presumed in danger, Bahorel is who knows where.”

“You don’t know where he is?” Bossuet asked with a frown. “Bahorel, I mean.”

Feuilly caught the confusion on their faces and mirrored their confusion. “Did you all think…?”

“Well we assumed you knew,” Joly said, “Wherever he was.”

“I had a bet that he was tied to your bed,” Bossuet admitted. “I owe Courfeyrac a lot of money, if you’d like to keep it quiet.”

“To be fair,” Combeferre added, “You didn’t seem particularly… sad.”

Feuilly let out an irritated groan. “So we have  _ two _ missing, two about to to turn and one in a state of depression because he hurt someone’s  _ feelings. _ ”

“And Marius is in love,” Joly added. “He’s conflicted about fighting lest his lover be widowed.”

“Which leaves…”

“Us,” Combeferre said, waving at the four of them, “Courfeyrac, Jehan. Gavroche. Musichetta and Éponine if they can forgive Enjolras for killing their packmate.”

Joly made a pained noise. “He isn’t dead. Not... Not until we see his body. He isn’t dead.”

“Someone should visit the morgues then.” Feuilly nodded at Combeferre’s suggestion. “Every morning. I will go if no-one else can.” 

“I will too,” Feuilly said. “Share the areas.” 

“Enjolras will no doubt be hypervigilant tomorrow, to make up for the loss to his dignity tonight.” Combeferre sat back against the wall, head resting on the cool brick. “He’s going to be infuriating.”

Feuilly snorted, raising the wine bottle in a comisaratory salute. “Bossuet, Joly, what is the… procedure for the wolves’ transformations?”

“Traditionally, when they were part of the bigger pack, the family would migrate to the east, towards the thick forests. Now, when it’s just the three…” Joly lowered his eyes. “Two of them, they said they would head as far out of Paris as they could in the time they had left and find some countryside area.”

“And…” Feuilly paused. “What exactly makes this transformation any different from when they choose to do so?”

Joly hmm-ed, then brought out a small notebook from his waistcoat pocket, eyes flicking to his tutor from time to time to check whether Combeferre approved. “I’ve not had the time to propose an in-depth thesis, but… what I’ve noticed is that when the transformation is a choice, the mind stays human even while the features become creature. They can choose how far to transform, from elongating their claws—”

“-like Éponine, all the time,” Bossuet interrupted,

“Or to the full wolf-like appearance. The only distinguishing feature that markes a werewolf from a wolf wolf is that the former has a short, stubby tail, almost like a bear’s, in place of the waggy, dog-like one.”

“So when it is not a choice, as with the full moon…?”

Joly glanced at his notes, but Feuilly suspected he knew the answer and was simply stalling to keep his emotions in check. “The human mind disappears, and the werewolf becomes more animal than human.”  

“We’re all animals,” Combeferre said, eyes still closed. “Humans, vampires, we’re not innately better than wolves, dogs, moths. ...Sorry, carry on.”

“They become like us when we haven’t fed,” Bossuet continued, “Though without, necessarily, the thirst for blood. Ép and ‘Chetta usually feast for days before they transform so there’s no chance of them feeling hungry as wolves and letting instinct take over.”

“‘Chetta said once she had a cold and couldn’t feast this one time and she woke up the next day covered in sheep wool,” Joly said, attempting to joke. It fell flat and he seemed the most affected by it. “Who knows what diseases the raw sheep would have contained…”

“So they become more reliant on instinct than thought,” Feuilly interjected, hoping to prevent Joly’s downwards spiral. 

Bossuet nodded, then bit his lip. “I… That… It isn’t exclusively about hunger,” he said, and Feuilly watched as Joly blushed. “We can’t let Joly go with her on the travels because they… They seem to be able to differentiate between people they know or trust by smell. And for Musichetta, Joly smells like… mating.”

Feuilly couldn’t prevent a shocked laugh, his face splitting in delight at the thought of them having to protect the young Joly from attack by a wiley wolf. 

“‘Chetta says Bossuet does too,” Joly said in his own defence, “But also, ‘cos her nose is all powerful, she says the wolf bit of her doesn’t trust the vampire bit of him.” This seemed to hurt Bossuet, Feuilly catching a small wince in the man’s expression, quickly covered up. “Plus Bossuet is stronger than me, he can just about hold her off when she’s transformed. Even without this,” Joly indicated his leg, “I was never strong.”

Feuilly clapped Joly on the back with a rough grin. “A passionate woman too much for you?”

“I can actually hear Bahorel in your voice as you talk,” Bossuet laughed as Joly groaned from the insinuation. The three started to laugh before the realisation hit them all at once.

Bossuet scratched his neck, awkward to have brought it up. “Haven’t even caught his scent, recently, have you?” he asked Combeferre.

Combeferre shook his head, gradually becoming more serious. “Then we have the spy to deal with. Spies, even.”

“We’re falling apart,” Feuilly realised. 

Combeferre removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes, suddenly seeming tired. He was old, Feuilly knew. Thousands of years old. Perhaps even older than Marius’ grandfather. Yet, despite his wisdom, he always seemed young, as young as any of them, the glint in his eye, the prospect of believing in a future that so many of the older vampires seemed to lose after centuries of disappointment. Perhaps he was on the brink of losing it. 

“Joly?” Combeferre asked after a moment.

“Yes, master?” 

“You and Bossuet, I want you to visit every place they serve wine in this area. Then move to the next, but I suspect young Grantaire will have stayed close. He’ll likely be there drinking all night, so you must stay up tonight until you find him, yes?”

The two men nodded. “And if we find him?”

“...Do you have a back-up for if Musichetta and Éponine do not make it to the forest?”

Joly turned to Bossuet, who went still. Joly frowned. “You do?” he asked, brows crossing. “I did not know this.”

“We didn’t think you would approve,” Bossuet replied, not looking at Joly. “It was only to be used as a last resort.”

Combeferre cut his young pupil off from further protestations. “Take him there, feed him anything you can. Hopefully he will not be hostile. Joly, if you get him in the room, you leave Bossuet to handle Grantaire and you fetch me, then you go get Courfeyrac. Yes?”

Joly did not miss a beat, nodding despite his slight look of betrayal.

“Feuilly.” Combeferre turned to face the man in question. “I will go to check on Enjolras. Once I have done that, I will send Courfeyrac to help you. I will try my hardest to prevent Enjolras from assisting; the least we need right now is Enjolras going missing too.”

Feuilly nodded. “But where to start?” He did not mean his voice to quiver quite as it did. He must have been more tired than he knew, the confirmation that none of the Amis knew where Bahorel was quick to send his mind reeling.

“Leave the cafés to Joly and Bossuet, if they find him there, so be it. Do you have any contacts within the police?”

“No,” Feuilly said, slowly.

“Then it might make it hard to request their help. Nethertheless I feel we should check the jails.” Combeferre scratched his chin. “Do you know where he works?”

Feuilly shook his head. “First I heard he was employed was from Marius.”

Combeferre confirmed the same, as did Joly and Bossuet. “So then we have our lead,” Combeferre concluded. “Start searching, perhaps the jails if you feel comfortable, and then I shall send Courfeyrac to take you to Marius.”

Combeferre surveyed the three before him and, after a second, smiled. “We mustn’t lose hope.” There was a grandfatherly warmth in Combeferre’s voice that soothed Feuilly, at least, filled him with some sort of soft confidence. 

The four left separately, Feuilly the last, spotting Madame Hucheloup behind the bar he had recently vacated. “Madame, I apologise, I must leave early.” Hucheloup was not best pleased, especially with the disturbance earlier, but with the promise that Feuilly would work more hours the next day, and would call today’s work voluntary or, without pay, she allowed him to leave.

Feuilly felt the loss of the wage keenly, having done more than eight hours of work that day already, but his heart, too, ached, and ached with the loss of something much greater.


	6. Chapter 6

Feuilly did not have contacts within the police. He had a single contact, an emergency-only line that usually only worked one way— from employer to employee. Inspector Javert, head of the Vampire hunters that Feuilly was a part of.

Feuilly had an inspector, a great inspector, a purveyor of justice on his side, and yet could not ask for his assistance, for the man Feuilly wanted to find was a vampire. Bahorel, certainly the most beautiful creature Feuilly had ever seen, frequenter of the hub of vampires that Feuilly had infiltrated… fate really was too cruel. 

Feuilly had almost resigned himself to submitting his dignity; he knew that, as a human, he could choose to be Bahorel’s concubine-of-sorts, as Joly was of Bossuet. Only, now Bahorel was gone and Feuilly couldn’t help but wonder if he was the only spy sent to this high-interest area, of if someone else was picking off vampires under Feuilly’s nose. 

Feuilly walked the five minutes it took to get to the Police precinct and hailed the receptionist. “I’m here to see Inspector Javert,” he said. The receptionist barely glanced at him before pointing down a corridor and pointing right. Feuilly was taken aback by how simple it was. He supposed Javert’s job was to protect the public, and that the public could thus walk in and request his assistance… 

There was something fundamentally chilling about the man he knew as Javert, sat behind a desk in a rigid, completely upright position as he flicked through a case file, face carved into concentration so deep-set it seemed almost permanent. Feuilly waited before Javert’s desk, not daring to interrupt the man’s work, taking Javert’s brief flick of the eyes up to Feuilly’s face as a sign to wait. He knew he was in Javert’s peripheral vision and so he waited in a soldier’s silence: not fidgeting, not swaying, hands held behind his back, feet shoulder’s distance apart. 

Feuilly watched the clock just over Javert’s shoulder, counting seconds out just for something to do. When he had reached seventeen minutes and thirty seconds, Javert shifted, so slightly that his impeccable posture had not changed but so that his focus was not on the page. 

“Yes?” The Inspector’s voice did not seem to contain emotion: no pleasure, for sure, but also no annoyance. Nothing as base as curiosity either, which could very much read as disinterest, or hostility. Feuilly wondered if this man were hostile, or perhaps just, with no information, unable to form an opinion one way or another of Feuilly.

“Inspector,” Feuilly started, and then wondered how exactly he was meant to reveal himself to a man who had very strictly told them never to reveal themselves. “I…”

“I know who you are.” Feuilly caught the tone of the Inspector’s voice this time, and could hear a conscious levelling of his familiarity.

“Right.” Feuilly tensed, involuntarily under Javert’s scrutiny. “I wanted to ask you something.”

Javert raised an eyebrow, ever so slightly. “Well?” The lilt of his voice turned into something almost bored, or joking, in a kind of blink-and-you’ll-miss it sense of the word. The briefest of emotion. 

“Are there…” Feuilly stopped and reconsidered his words. “My mission was—  _ is _ ,” he corrected quickly, “Reconnaissance.” Javert nodded, once. “They grow suspicious of a spy,” he said, and saw Javert’s face return to emotionless.

“If you are here to give a mission report, I will not be pleased.”

“No, Sir. I just wanted to know... Is there a second… even third spy?”

Javert’s eyes twitched into a sort-of squint; so brief that Feuilly could not discern whether it was an expression of guilt and thus a yes, or of suspicion, that Feuilly was about to double-cross them. “Why is this relevant to your mission?”

“There have been… disappearances. I wondered whether you had ordered one of ours to…” Feuilly found the right word and felt his heart drop. “Eliminate them.”

The blank look in Javert’s eye told Feuilly that the answer was no, even before the Inspector could open his mouth. “How many?”

“Two that I know of.”

“Two vampires…” Javert’s hand found his pocketbook, flicking it open and scratching notes to himself. “High up the food chain or common foot soldiers?”

“One vampire, sir, new but part of the core.”

Javert’s face betrayed his interest, a slight downwards turn of the mouth. “And the other? A human whore or some such?”

“He’s a werewolf,” Feuilly said, stamping down his instinct to protect, or to argue against. If Javert were to suspect Feuilly’s growing feelings towards the group, there would be little chance he would see them again, more likely locked in jail for… what, treason? Spying? Plotting revolution? 

“A… werewolf?” Javert said, head cocking just slightly. His pencil had stilled on the page. “Have you been aware that there was a werewolf amongst them?”

Feuilly felt his mouth go dry, all at once. No, God, he was a fool. He had not reported the coalition between the three groups, not yet. At first he had simply wanted to gain more information so he could submit a more comprehensive report, but until recently… he had not wanted to jump the gun too fast. He had wanted to protect the secret in case he were to jump the proverbial Hunter ship. And for what? To let his mouth run without thought before the one man to whom it would matter. 

Feuilly swallowed, then nodded. “Yes, sir. I was… hoping to gain more information about the… wolf,” singular, he thought, keep it singular. “Before jumping to conclusions. It seems he was… interested in a member of the group,” filter truths to surround lies, “But he went missing, just after they suspected a spy. I wondered…” Feuilly stopped himself, knowing his next statement would have been going too far beyond white lies to keep his options open.

“Did you converse with him much?”

“Yes.”

“About?”

“He was fairly guarded to anything beyond jokes, Sir.”

Javert considered this for a moment. “He did not tell you why he had split from his pack?” Feuilly shook his head no. Not a lie, technically. Javert scribbled something in his notebook, watching his words as if trying to decode them. “How long had he been part of the group?”

“Perhaps a year. Relatively new, but established.”

“His name?”

Feuilly faltered. “Excuse me?”

Javert glanced back up at him. “His name. Come, you frequently joked with him, you must have his name.”

Feuilly attempted to channel his nerves through thought. “He… he went by ‘R’,” Feuilly said in a rush. Yes, that would protect Grantaire’s identity.

“‘R’? Hm.” Javert noted this. “And his real name?” Feuilly probably went a shade paler, for Javert scoffed. “Come, you cannot think I would believe that a spy of mine did not learn his name.”

It felt as if Javert were reaching out, through Feuilly’s chest, and grabbing hold of his heart, squeezing it dead. Feuilly closed his eyes, tasting betrayal like sour milk. “Grantaire.”

Javert nodded, jotting it down. “Grantaire,” Javert repeated. “Description?”

“A head shorter than myself. Brown skin, lighter than mine. Hook nose, thick curls, beard.” 

“A Greek, perhaps,” Javert wondered to himself. “His interests lay with who?”

Vaguely, Feuilly could hear himself give excuses to his candid answers. If there really were multiple spies, it would only harm his case to give false information so well known. “The leader. Enjolras.”

“Ah,” Javert said, as if this did not surprise him, drawing a tight arrow from the name ‘Grantaire’ to the name ‘Enjolras’ in his book. 

“Reciprocated?”

“I cannot be sure, Sir.”

Javert’s eyes flicked up at this. “You cannot be sure? Were they in bed with one another or not?”

Feuilly’s teeth ground. “No, Sir.”

“Hm.” Javert scribbled something illegible in the book, losing himself to thought.

“You seem disappointed, Sir.” Feuilly willed himself to sound blank.

“Yes.” Javert ran out of room and turned to a new page. “Yes, I have been given orders, and this would have been a nice link. As it is, it may be usable.” 

“May I ask what the order was, Sir?”

Javert smiled, the first Feuilly had witnessed since meeting the man. “How old are you?”

“Twenty seven in October, Sir.”

“Twenty seven. Do you have a wife?”

“No, Sir.”

“A girlfriend? The tavern girl where you work?”

“I’m— I am seeing someone, Sir,” Feuilly said, mostly just in the hopes that Javert would cease his line of question.

“I see,” Javert said, and must have believed Feuilly’s intensity, for Javert shrugged whatever questions were to follow away. “Then no, you cannot ask what my orders were.”

Feuilly’s mind whirred about the apparent non-sequitur— Feuilly’s having a partner and his asking after the orders? So the orders must have something to do with seduction; no respecting Government official would ask its officers to embark on a task when wed or with the promise of such on the horizon. 

Feuilly’s mind wandered back to Grantaire, and Javert’s interest in the reciprocation— Gears clicked into place.  _ Javert had been ordered to link revolution with homosexuality and vampirism. _ As the realisation hit him, he saw that Javert very much intended him to figure out the answer, a sliver of pride in Javert’s eye as he watched Feuilly pull each threat together. But why? Why would Javert need Feuilly to know without telling him directly?

“Has there been any other report of people going missing?”

“Not that I know of, Sir.”

This did not seem to be the answer Javert was looking for, evidently jarred by the answer. “No.” Javert sighed, leaning back in his chair. “...No, there have been no orders to eliminate. Simply to watch.”

A confirmation of several spies, then. Feuilly’s mind tracked familiar routes from the last week; revolving through faces, through motives, through disguises in an attempt to identify his fellows. It was hard to reroute suspicion away from fellows he did not know.

“Knowing would put you more at risk,” Javert answered before Feuilly could vocalise his request. “If I were to tell you, you would seek one another out and your conversations could raise questions.” 

“But—”

“You cannot trust anyone in this profession.” Javert’s voice had taken the steel of a superior, one with decades of experience to speak from. He looked serious, not in concentration, as he had before, but with genuine advice, genuine concern. “Even your most trusted allies may not be what they seem. Hence, I reiterate. You cannot trust anyone.”

“Not even you, Sir?” 

Javert grinned at Feuilly’s challenge, the sight so ferocious it sent a shock of adrenaline through his body, every muscle screaming to run. 

“I trust you’ll hide my scent before you return to your duties?” Javert asked, seeming almost entertained.

“I was asked here,” Feuilly said, seeing no point in lying now and desperate to escape. “They will expect me to smell of the police.”

Javert hummed, low and deep. “Well then,” he said, and then focused back on his paperwork, as seamlessly as if Feuilly had not just been talking with him. Feuilly turned, and walked, and left, out into the streets before he could say anything more foolish. Once out, he took a breath of air, deep, to clear the panic from his blood. 

“Head to head with the great Inspector himself, hm?” Feuilly’s heart jumped to hear Courfeyrac’s voice, feeling guilty, so guilty— but no, he had a reason, an excuse, he was told to be here, he was— “‘Ferre told me you might hit up the jails. Got nerve walking in and going straight for the head.”

“Not intentionally,” Feuilly said, calming his breathing, knowing that Courfeyrac would be able to hear his panic. “He was the only one free.”

“Look like you barely made it out.”

Feuilly touched his hand to his brow, self-conscious now of how he was sweating. Then, inexplicably, he started to laugh. “He’s terrifying, Courf.”

Courfeyrac was smiling in that way he did when he was promising that he understood you. Without changing expression or tone, he continued. “Imagine what he’s like with a stake at your heart.” 

Feuilly nodded. No, he could not imagine. Feuilly had met with a reasonable Javert, as close to camaraderie as Feuilly was sure the man could come to. 

For Feuilly, hunting was just another job. He had taken it on simply because Javert had offered it to him, a young man at a factory. Not exactly police work, but better paid than the factory, and for nothing more than sitting, waiting and watching. 

_ And talking, befriending, having genuine feelings for… _ “Fuck,” he said, “Fuck, fuck this.” 

Courfeyrac took Feuilly in, his still-sweating forehead, his panicked flush, his wide eyes, his ragged breathing, and his smile changed, minutely, into one of sympathy. “He really did a number on you, huh.” He reached out to touch Feuilly’s shoulder. “Come, Marius awaits. We can talk while we walk.”

-

“It is probably for the best that it was me waiting for you outside of that building.” 

Feuilly and Courfeyrac had been walking in mostly silence for the last half hour as they directed themselves towards Courfeyrac’s apartment, and Feuilly had almost forgotten that the other man walked besides him until he spoke, a neutrality rare for the typically bouncy Courfeyrac.

Feuilly’s questioning look prompted Courfeyrac to continue.

“Enjolras and ‘Ferre, they believe in you more than they do most members of the Amis. Some would say they listen to your advice more readily than mine—” Courfeyrac held up his hand to quash Feuilly’s protestations. “And with good reason. I have no mind to organisation, that is why I suit the pair so well.” 

“Courf…” 

Courfeyrac pinched the thumb and forefinger of his extended hand together, as if a conductor signalling for quiet. “I do not envy you,” Courfeyrac assured, “In fact, I am relieved that they have you to provide a human perspective. A touch of reality, as it were.” 

“But…”

“Don’t you worry, I have not lost my ego quite yet. I still believe you cannot destroy our trifecta, nor do I believe you could upseat or upstage me. Because while I may not be as intelligent as our dear friends, I have a good nose for people. It is why they will always trust me to filter out bad intentions.”

Feuilly directed his gaze at the cobble, attempting to swallow the fear he could feel rising in his throat. “I don’t think I understand you.”

“It is why they have trusted me with the task of flushing out the spy,” Courfeyrac said. Feuilly felt himself go cold. Willed himself to keep walking. 

“I do not believe you would go to Javert to report Bahorel missing.”

Feuilly kept going forwards, biting his lip, feeling his breathing start to labour. He had no weapon on him, nor did he believe he could outrun Courfeyrac. It was dark, the summer sun already mostly set. Not many people out on the streets, plenty of alleys to drag Feuilly down— a laugh— Courfeyrac, laughing, Feuilly jumped, not daring to turn back to match expression to laugh. It would be Courfeyrac, then, who would make the killing blow.

Courfeyrac’s hand on Feuillly’s shoulder from behind, squeezing tight. Courfeyrac’s nails were sharp, filed that way by Éponine during one of their evenings bonding. Then— then the hand was gone, and Courfeyrac was chuckling. 

“A mouse! I would mistake you for a mouse, Feuilly, if I were to pass by and listen to your heartbeat. You sound like you’re being chased by a big, scary cat. And your eyes, darting to alleyways. No, come.” Courfeyrac twisted Feuilly to face him, physically maneuvering him around. 

“It- I didn’t- I haven’t—”

Courfeyrac sighed. “You are a police spy, yes?”

“I haven’t—” Feuilly bit his tongue in his haste. “I swear, Courfeyrac, I have not given them anything, I swear, I swear—”

Courfeyrac let Feuilly come to tears, to flush red with guilt, with terror, kept watching him as he turned through each emotion.

“Then that is fine.”

“I’m sorry, I swear, I—” 

“We’re good, Feuilly.”

“No, no, you don’t understand, I lied, I— I told them about Grantaire, I told him,  _ him _ , Javert knows about Grantaire, and it’s my fault.”

“You told him what? What, specifically?”

“That he was— a part of the group. They did not know that they were part of us.”

“Oh. ...Oh, Feuilly…”

“I know, I’m so sorry, I—”

“No, Feuilly, you don’t understand, you’re a goldmine! A double agent! You only told him about Grantaire?”

“I— I let his name slip, but kept his presence singular.” Feuilly’s fear was ebbing, and he rubbed his sleeve against his eyes to clear his tears. Still feeling guilt like a knife through the heart, he could not meet Courfeyrac’s eye. “He did not seem suspicious.”

“What else did he not know?”

Feuilly dug his teeth into the inside of his lip. So this was it, then. Courfeyrac expected this of him… of course he did. To be doublecross the man who’d taken him in. Courfeyrac’s fingers moved to Feuilly’s lapel. 

“Feuilly…”

Feuilly swallowed. Then swallowed again. His throat felt rough. “Can I… Would you mind if... would you trust me if I asked if we could continue this conversation at a later date?”

Courfeyrac paused. He then took a step back, smoothing out Feuilly’s lapels as he did so. He put a finger to his chin, the other arm propping up his elbow. He looked like a great philosopher, or a dandyish impression of one. Feline, consciously embodying the great cat to Feuilly’s mouse. Even his smile showed canines like a hunter. “You know, Feuilly, I believe I will trust you.”

“Oh, thank God.” Feuilly deflated by half, all unnecessary air leaving his body in a great sigh. While doubled over, his brain was given a chance to empty, then reset. Once he had regained some composure, he stood back up and offered his hand to Courfeyrac. 

It was taken and shaken and the two men nodded their regained friendship. Feuilly could not even begin to imagine what risk Courfeyrac was taking by accepting Feuilly’s proposal. “There are two of us.”

“Well yes,” Courfeyrac said, pointing first at Feuilly, then at himself in an exaggerated gesture. 

“No, spies. Possibly more. That is all I’m willing to say on the matter for now.”

“Then to Marius,” Courfeyrac said, the barest shadow of thought on his face.

“To Marius,” Feuilly echoed. Courfeyrac nodded, kicked his heel against the road and carried onwards.

-

Marius, it turned out, was not at Courfeyrac’s apartment as he had been assuming. “He has not been gone long though,” Courfeyrac assured. 

“You can tell that by just—” Feuilly took an exaggerated sniff of air, making Courfeyrac laugh.

“Nothing as dramatic as that, we’re majestic creatures, not swine.” He breathed, normally, if a bit staged due to the nature of the thing. “The smells are all around us, all the time. His is still strong, hence he must not have left.

Feuilly nodded, understanding. Then, with a thought, frowned. “But then—” he started, “What do I smell of?”

“You? Feuilly we love you. You smell clean, all the time. It’s a goddamn miracle with how much you work. Honestly, you’d think in a group of beings with powerful senses, more would take the time to clean themselves.”

Feuilly felt himself colour, gratified by the compliment. “...But… so then why on earth did Bossuet bet against you, regarding Bahorel’s disappearance?”

Courfeyrac’s face was blank for a half second before breaking into a grin. “That devil, ah so I win! He owes me a lot of money, Feuilly, I thank you.” Courfeyrac rubbed his hands together, as if ready to be handed his coins. “Bossuet believed in your cleanliness to an extent that he said you would be able to wash the smell of sex from yourself. Thus for him, a safe bet was that Bahorel was with you, fucked into submission.”

Feuilly’s face heated further, gratified that the group believed so much of his powers of seduction, but equally mortified that they had discussed the relationship to such an extreme.

“I, for one,” Courfeyrac continued, “Do not believe that that amount of sex could be washed from your sinful skin, no matter how much soap you used. Hence, the safer bet, you had not had sex with him yet.”

Feuilly gaped, for a moment, then decided nothing he could say on the matter would change Courfeyrac’s triumphant grin, so he shut his mouth. 

“Well then, with that sorted, let’s go find our lost boy, hm?” 

-

Their search brought them to the gates of the Gillenormand household. Feuilly felt himself go a few shades lighter. “I can’t go in there, Courf, you know that. They will eat me alive.” 

“No, come, the old dodger’s plenty genial, and his daughter would not make a move on you without the man’s permission. The rest of the sorry lot in there is human, or what’s left of them anyway.” When Feuilly did not move to follow Courfeyrac through the gates, Courfeyrac turned back. 

“We don’t have time for this.” Courfeyrac bit his lip in thought, before giving a dramatic ‘oh course’. “I’m going to concubine you.”

Feuilly blinked. “While I’m flattered, I—” 

“Temporarily, you fool, I know I’m an irresistible catch and any offer of loving is a temptation, but I do have my limits.”

“Oh. Yes, right, quite.” Feuilly nodded. He supposed he did know a few vampires who had cycled through human concubines, able to replace them when the relationship wasn’t working out. “How does it work?” 

“It relies on scent-marking, as a cat does with its territory.”

The disgust must have been plain on Feuilly’s face for Courfeyrac laughed. “I’m not going to piss on you, Feui.”

-

Feuilly’s hand hovered above the smear of blood on his neck. Every eye in the room was pinned on it and Feuilly was desperate to scratch it off, his body urging him to make himself less obvious, to hide from these predators’ sight.

Marius’ eyes flicked to Courfeyrac, panic in his expression. “Does Combeferre know? Courfeyrac, this will destroy him.”

“Relax, my dear.” Courfeyrac was licking his thumb to heal the wound, his very posture the complete opposite of Feuilly’s: relaxed, comfortable, at home. “It’s a temporary measure. A way to get him inside the house without being jumped.” 

Marius nodded, still jittery. His eyes returned to Feuilly. “Courfeyrac, may I speak to you? Alone?”

“Please—” Feuilly said without meaning to, the very idea of Courfeyrac leaving him alone in the room with the five or so servants and Marius’ Aunt sending him to the boundary of hysteria. He implored Courfeyrac with desperate eyes, who then turned to Marius and indicated Feuilly’s face.

“I cannot in good conscience leave the man alone. Look at him. Scared white, the poor mouse.”

“But…” Marius watched Feuilly again, looked back at Courfeyrac, and sniffed, his eyes widening at Courfeyrac in a ‘can’t you see the problem’ sort of way.

“Oh, oh I see!” Courfeyrac broke into a smile. “Dear Feuilly’s just been to the police house to check whether they had Bahorel behind bars,” Courfeyrac said, clarifying Feuilly’s smell. 

Marius calmed some, though there was doubt lingering behind his eyes. 

“He wasn’t,” Feuilly said with a bitter edge. “Behind bars. But thanks for asking.”

Marius, for his sins, had the grace to seem sheepish. “I’m sorry,” Marius said, “My mind has been elsewhere, and, well, with all this talk of spies…” 

Feuilly felt himself rise to the insinuation, before quickly realising that Marius was right to suspect him. Feuilly was exactly what Marius expected of him, and there was no reason Feuilly should feel anything but shame. Courfeyrac put a hand on Feuilly’s wrist and squeezed lightly, encouraging. “Of course,” Feuilly said, as genial as he could make himself.

“You had some business with me?” 

Feuilly felt some relief in getting back to topic. “Bahorel,” he said rather desperately. “You were the last to see him. Did he say where he was going? Or… did you read what the letter said?”

“No, a boy came… and…” Marius squeezed his eyes shut, like a small child attempting to think hard. Feuilly supposed that that was what Marius was… all accounts said that this boy was only a recent addition to the fold, so he could not be more that his apparent age: early twenties, if that. Species aside, Feuilly could well be a decade older than the boy. “I think I recall him saying his boss had found where he lived? That he was in great trouble? Then he called me friend and left.” 

_ A lonely boy clutching to the promise of friendship.  _ Feuilly chastised himself for sounding quite so damning of Marius.

“Humans are exceedingly selfish.” Marius was all but pouting, a petulant child, and Feuilly found himself taking back his mental apology.  _ Rich brat _ . “What?” Marius asked Courfeyrac, in a confrontational mood. “That he’ll search for Bahorel, but not Grantaire, after what he’s done.”

“Don’t mind him, Feuilly, Marius is just in a bind because his amore is a human girl. Love makes the best of us blind.” 

Prickling at the dismissal, Marius stood, pointing at Feuilly. “It’s because of him that Grantaire left,” Marius said, brows pinching in a way that seemed to suggest half that he was bemused, half that he was accusing.

“What—” Feuilly started, before Courfeyrac cut him off with a sharp “Marius, not now.”

Marius cocked his head at Courfeyrac. Feuilly turned to watch as Courfeyrac sent Marius some silent warning.

“What?” Feuilly asked, “What is it that I have done?”

“It’s—” Marius tried, but Courfeyrac was quick to once again stem the man’s words.

“Courfeyrac,” Feuilly warned, eyes darkening. “Tell me.”

“I shall tell you once Bahorel is safe.”

“And if he’s dead? Shall it remain a great mystery forever?” 

“He’s not dead, Feui.”

“And how do you know that, Courfeyrac? Can you smell him? Can you… sense him? Can you hear his heartbeat?”

“No…”

“No. So tell me.” 

“Grantaire told Enjolras you were the spy,” Marius said in a single breath, too quick for Courfeyrac to censor. “But Enjolras could not believe him and claimed he was simply being spiteful because of your wit, and so he kicked Grantaire out.”

“Enjolras… believed in me over Grantaire?” Feuilly’s heart was well on the way to destroying itself. Every emotion he was capable of seemed to have disappeared to be replaced with the one, repeating notion. Guilt. Guilt, guilt, guilt guilt… He shrivelled into himself, shoulders hunching, head bowing, fists clenching. Whatever had happened to Grantaire, to Bahorel… it should have been him. It should have happened to him.

Courfeyrac’s hand on his back, stroking in soft motions, as if to quell sickness. “Anything else you remember that might help us, Marius?” Courfeyrac asked, his voice softer, quieter, as if to speak away from Feuilly’s hearing.

A silence. Feuilly assumed it was a no. “Except…” Marius said, after a beat. “I thought it strange that the boy asked for ‘B’, instead of using his name. ‘Big B’, he called himself.”

A gamin coming to collect him. A nickname. Feuilly groaned. It could only mean one thing...that Bahorel was part of a gang. 

“When I heard ‘boss’ I actually believed that he was employed,” Feuilly laughed. It was not a very happy laugh. “But of course, he was simply referring to his gang leader. Why am I not surprised.” 

And if Feuilly was to get an in with a gang, he would have to exploit a gang-member. But the only one he had access to was Éponine, who was currently, well, transforming into a creature even less helpful than she usually was. 

Courfeyrac, having come to the same conclusion, simply shrugged. “Is this not good for us? It is far easier to search for gangs than through every place of employment in the city.”

-

Even before entering the room, Feuilly could smell the distinct smell that followed Jehan around wherever they went, even to his unrefined nose. Oil paints, scented candles, alcohol for cleaning brushes with, and the slight tinge of tobacco smoke, apparently from nowhere as, to Feuilly’s knowledge, the artist themself did not smoke.

Courfeyrac knocked once before entering, not waiting for any kind of permission, much to Feuilly’s horror. “Jehan!” Courfeyrac greeted. “Hope we’re not disturbing.”

“Not at all,” came Jehan’s voice. “Welcome, welcome!” they said once they appeared in the doorway. “Feuilly! What a pleasure. Come in!” 

“Sorry to disturb you…” Feuilly glanced at Jehan’s paintbrush. “Are you working?”

“Hm? Oh, yes, but I welcome guests any time. It helps me concentrate!” Jehan beckoned them further in, the mix of smells thickening the further they entered. Feuilly, curious, looked about the room. He had never visited the apartment of an artist before. It was littered with newspapers, drying canvases, various paints and— 

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” All at once Feuilly understood why it was that Courfeyrac had directed them this way, and where the tobacco scent originated from. Sat on Jehan’s bed was Montparnasse, his hat on the bed beside him. Montparnasse raised a hand in salut. 

“I said no moving,” Jehan chastised as they went to sit on a chair directly opposite, easel before them.

“He’s apparently Jehan’s greatest muse,” Courfeyrac explained as he went to sit on another chair in the corner of the room, set up with a table to accommodate two guests. “Make yourself at home,” he said, indicating the other wooden chair, the image of a perfect host in lieu of Jehan. 

From their position, they had a perfect view of both Jehan’s work and the muse himself, Jehan’s paintbrush mixing oils on a palette before dabbing Montparnasse’s likeness onto the canvas. Montparnasse himself sat perfectly still, left leg dangling off the side of the bed, the other drawn up so his right ankle rested on his left knee. He propped himself up with one arm behind him, the fingers on the other hand tangling through the hairs at the back of his neck. His face tilted towards the window, as if in thought.

They watched in silence for some while, the only break when Jehan got up to take another tube of paint, and not once did Montparnasse so much as roll a shoulder out of place. “He certainly acts the part,” Feuilly conceded to Courfeyrac. Feuilly had not once seen the man sit so quietly before, almost trance-like, his attention not catching on anything. Even as he watched out of the window, his eyes did not trail the movement of a bird or cloud, his attention did not wander that Feuilly could see. 

Feuilly himself marked every movement he made on the rickety chair, conscious not to disturb Jehan but most likely doing so anyway. He sneezed, twice, he scratched an itch on his nose, he shook out a crick in his neck, he scratched his cheek, a bird caught his attention… He was not, he concluded, cut for the role that Montparnasse was playing. He found himself building new respect for the dandy. Very few could play a role so much so as to become a living embodiment of it.

Feuilly glanced about as far as he could in his chair to catch glimpses of more of Feuilly’s works. He had not seen their portfolio before, had only heard their poetry and seen pencil sketches drawn on scraps of Marius or another Amis’ pocketbook. Jehan, of course, never brought their own. 

Here in the studio Feuilly was able to see Jehan’s more colourful works: still-lifes he could recognise as this or that vase from the room, some more abstracted works, rivers, he thought, or perhaps skies, and then portraits, some quick, charcoal, others more thoughtful, as the one Jehan was painting now.

“May I?” Feuilly asked after having exhausted what he could see, and indicating the stacks of works hidden under tarps or acting as clothes-hangers.

“Of course!” Jehan replied, barely taking their eyes off of Montparnasse. “What use is art if one cannot view it.”

“Not this argument again,” Montparnasse said under his breath. “Please, please don’t argue with them. Jehan, don’t. Feuilly doesn’t want to hear it.”

“I—” Feuilly started to object, interest in the matter flaring, before Montparnasse moved from his position to throw him a look of hatred. 

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

“You’ve moved!” Jehan cried, so heartfelt that Feuilly could not but feel responsible. And so he shrugged, allowed Montparnasse the win, and moved towards the art.

First he gravitated towards the charcoals, easier to flick through. Most were very quick, a few strokes to capture a movement, most likely all from a life-drawing session. He stopped as he neared the back and realised that this hypothetical session had had a single model, and that he was seeing a lot more of that man’s private areas than he was comfortable with. He glanced behind his shoulder, feeling almost like a voyeur, and caught Montparnasse giving him a wink. Feuilly cleared his throat, nearly scrunching the papers by accident. 

He moved on to the oils. The first was a self-portrait in cold colours; a look on Jehan’s face much unlike any he showed publically. Melancholy… lonely. But almost refreshingly so. It was nice to know Jehan took the time to be sad, too, instead of wholly a ray of sunshine. 

The second was of Enjolras, all glory and youthful victory in red. Then Courfeyrac, sunshine in his eyes, out in the green of a park. Combeferre, in a library Feuilly didn’t recognise, and smaller compared to the first three, the man tucked away in a corner of the canvas. Grantaire, looking away with a smirk, in shadow. Joly, mimicking Combeferre’s pose, but closer, less dower. Bossuet, mid-laugh, almost over-saturated. Éponine, grinning, fearsome, the lines more harsh. Marius… only partially complete, but looking hopeful. Feuilly started to slow as he came to the last two canvases. 

There he was, behind the bar of the Musain, slightly hunched as he cleaned a glass. Maybe thoughtful? Bright. It was the first time Feuilly had seen himself portrayed, and displayed as something worthy to be looked at. He felt his throat go tight at the thought, which was foolish, he told himself, and forced himself to look at the final canvas. 

Bahorel. Grinning. A rush of sound and Feuilly could hear the exact joke Bahorel had been telling. It had only been a fortnight ago, something stupid about a duck. Bahorel hadn’t been able to stop laughing as he told it. Feuilly tried to clear his throat, quietly, not wanting any of the others to pay attention to the way he was wiping at his eyes.

“Feuilly, you’re an artist too, yes?” Jehan had evidently been watching him, then. “Bahorel told me about your fans.”

“I don’t think you’d call them art. It’s just painting flowers on sticks.”

“Then all I do is paint humans on cloth,” Jehan dismissed. “You can have the painting of Bahorel. If you’d like it.”

“...Thanks. I’ll… wait until he’s home.” Feuilly turned and returned to Courfeyrac, forcing a smile. “He’d think I was a real creep if he came home and that was on the wall.”

“Knowing Bahorel, I’d say he’d be more than flattered.”

“All the more reason not to.” Feuilly laughed, wiping his nose with a handkerchief. 

The bed creaked in its corner as Montparnasse was finally relieved of his post, rolling his shoulders like an old man after a harsh night’s sleep. Feuilly watched Jehan watch Montparnasse, watched Jehan dab a slight bit more paint in the corner of canvas-parnasse’s lips, curving the edge into the barest flicker of a smile. That, more than anything else, made Feuilly’s gut wrench. 

“Bahorel is part of a gang,” he blurted, the situation ceasing to stop being calming in its normalcy. “We need him to tell us what he knows.”

Montparnasse was cleaning dirt from underneath his fingernails, feigning disinterest. Then he looked up, and smiled. “‘Him’ has a name.” 


	7. Chapter 7

They were not friends, Javert thought, not quite. Javert had no experience with friendship, but he thought it might be a little less… awkward. 

“What?” Javert asked, noticing he was being watched and scowling on instinct.

Valjean shook his head quickly, guilty at having been caught. His eyes dropped to his work, as if hastily reading. When he looked up, minutes later, and found Javert still scowling, he couldn’t help a self-deprecating smile and, once again avoiding Javert’s gaze, he spoke to his work. “Your eyes seem bigger.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your eyes. ...You have been squinting less since M—sur M—.” Valjean had only noticed this a few weeks ago, in a similar situation they were in now; alone in the fire-lit library of Valjean’s house, working alone but together. Valjean had looked up, checking, perhaps, to see if Javert was comfortable, or if he looked as if he would need to rest soon, only to find Javert watching him, book abandoned on the side. 

The moment had struck Valjean (and Javert, too, who had jumped from his seat and gone to fetch another book). He remembered the way Javert would watch him when he still suspected Mayor Madeleine, hard lines of his face pressing Javert’s cold eyes into that perpetual predatory expression, so much so that Madeleine couldn’t have even guessed at the colour of the Inspector’s eyes, despite their proximity at the time.

Since then, Valjean had been noticing Javert’s eyes more and more, not just at home but as they walked the streets together. This too, had changed- where before, on their rounds of M—sur M— and the surrounding docks Javert had marched, eyes forward, head held high through the streets, now Javert’s attention might be caught by the leaves of a tree or a decoration on a specific building, a child playing with a piece of garbage, a pedlar hawking her wares.

Javert’s eyes were a honey-ish brown, the base a hazelnut just darker than his skin. Madeleine would not have cared if he  _ had  _ noticed. Valjean thought them wonderful.

“I...“ Javert squinted as if to protect himself, his bodily instinct to contradict Valjean. “You...” A frown accompanied the squint. “Noticed.” Javert released the tension in his face, slightly, eyes sliding from Valjean to the window. 

“The leaves,” Javert said, nodding in the direct of the tree outside. Valjean turned to see, but other than a fairly ordinary tree, he wasn’t sure what he was meant to be looking at. Javert cleared his throat, unused to bearing his weaknesses. “Before you… well. My eyes. I couldn’t… Hm.”

It took a moment to decode Javert’s disjointed mutterings, but Valjean soon realised what he had been alluding to. “You had bad eyesight? Javert, you should have said, I would have found an optician.”

“You think I would have allowed M'sieur le Mayor donate me glasses? Pah.”

“Javert,” Valjean reprimanded. He wasn’t sure whether it was because of Javert’s constant separation of Madeleine from Valjean, or whether it was Javert’s aversion to his ‘charity’.

Javert waved his hand. It was not important. Valjean decided he would allow the feud to dissipate for once. “I suppose for this, I must thank you.” Javert studied his own fingers, turning his hands over, before focusing on Valjean’s face through them. If Javert were still capable, he might have coloured to find himself so scrutinised by Valjean, in a setting such as this. As it were, he felt his features soften in an expression of forgiveness. Thankfulness. 

Finding the moment filling with more sentiment than he could handle, Javert sought to change the subject. He cleared his throat before lowering his eyes to watch Valjean’s work. “Your writing. It has changed since M— sur M— .” Valjean’s quill paused, hovering above the page. Javert shook his head. “I apologise. That must be strange to mention.”

“Not at all.” Valjean pushed the papers closer to Javert so he could read them without feigning disinterest. “I wasn’t sure you would notice.”

Javert sat back, his mind, it seemed, in the mood to reminisce. “There was a criminal... Jondrette,” Javert said, slowly. “He would send letters to rich families claiming he had blackmail material, or that their children would be in peril if money was not ‘donated’ to the messengers.”

A flicker of a memory passed Valjean’s face and Javert scrutinised him. A moment of intense doubt: was Valjean Jondrette? Before the eventual guilt, a feeling he was getting more used to feeling. Valjean, perhaps picking up on Javert’s suspicion, saddened. “I was not he,” he said.

Javert nodded, one, twice, thinking, yes, this man was telling the truth. “So why the shadow of memory?”

An involuntary smile. Valjean smothered it quickly. “I have been victim to many such letter in my time in Paris.” Javert’s teeth ground at the thought. Of course. That was not surprising. “Some I had ways of verifying their lack of truth… ones that, for instance, claimed my… fatherhood of a young child.”

“And I don’t suppose you simply handed those to the police?” 

“...To think of such a rouse, one must be in an unfortunate situation…” 

Javert felt his eyes roll in an exaggerated expression of disbelief at Valjean’s extent of charity. “For God’s sake, Valjean.”

Valjean’s smile returned. “Yes,” he said simply. “Exactly.”

“And the other letters? You would believe those?”

Something more serious passed over Valjean’s face. “Once, the author of the letter followed through with his threats. I did not see it wise to provoke any further danger to my family.”

Javert studied Valjean, face downturned, lit by a crackling fire, a bulk of muscle, hulked over, a shag of white hair hiding the most of his expression. Javert felt his stupidity like a punch to the throat. “You. You were the kidnap victim.” Then, “That boy, your son-in-law. He-”

“Marius.”

Javert felt the need to cover Marius’ presence at the scene of the crime, wanting to question the boy and his lack of help for the man Javert now knew was the father of his wife. He opened his mouth to dismiss his hasty words, before squinting. 

“You… You cannot have… He was but a few metres from you.”

Valjean shrugged a shoulder, as if squirming from the question. 

“You knew he was there. Ah God, you irksome man! You might have asked for his help!”

“And endanger the young man’s life? No.”

“Surely you could have smelled the powder, the pistol?”

“I could also smell you, Inspector, and you’ll forgive my past… hesitance to be in the same room as you. Particularly as I was, bound to the bed.”

Javert bit his lip, hating that he felt almost slighted by the turn of events. His past self had been so angered by the disappearance of the very man they were attempting to save that the victory of catching Thernadier had seemed almost dismal. Javert took a deep breath to clear his mind of the negativity of the thought. 

Suddenly, Valean laughed. At Javert’s pinched eyebrows, Valjean apologised. “Sorry, I just… I simply remembered your words when you burst into the room. ‘Would you like my hat?’” I did not appreciate your humour at the time, but now I wish I had been your friend sooner, so that I might have laughed.”

“I doubt many would believe that I had one. A sense of humour, that is.”  

“I admit that you do not show it very often.”

“The thrill of finally catching that criminal had an effect on me, I suspect.” His eyes dropped back down to the paper on the desk, and remembered his thread of thought. He shook away thoughts of comedy. “Jondrette… Thernadier. He would never change his handwriting, and so if we had caught him with a letter, we would have had plenty of evidence. But you…”

A corner of Valjean’s lip lifted in a tight smile. “You commented on my hand before, in M—sur M—, how the letters seemed strange to you. So I’ve been practising. To make them more pleasing. ...Aesthetically.”

“You could barely sign your own name in Toulon.”

Valjean nodded. “I taught myself shortly before I became mayor.”

Javert hummed, sounding impressed as his finger traced the words on the page. “And now this. Nothing short of aristocratic.”

“I wanted Cosette to learn to write with a pretty hand, not like an illiterate ex-convict.”

“I’m sure the Sisters would not have appreciated that, no.”

“It was strange,” Valjean said, as if weighing his words, testing them in his mind before opening them out to Javert. “To… watch her grow.” Valjean looked at his hands, then, tentatively at Javert, as if wondering if he were to be allowed to look. Finding Javert intrigued, Valjean continued. “My sister was my elder. When I was old enough to care, she seemed an adult to me, never an adolescent. Her children…” Here Valjean stalled, not wanting to sour the mood.

Javert put the letter back down on the table and touched his hand against Valjean’s on the table- no more than a gentle brush, no force nor warmth. Simple encouragement, as Valjean had displayed towards him. “I regret not having watched her children grow up. To have seen them living.”

“You wish you had had children?” Javert asked, and then frowned. That did not seem appropriate now. “Of your own blood.”

“…no.” Valjean’s brow furrowed.

“And yet you seem unconvinced by your own answer.”

“Fantine, in her last hours, talked of another daughter she had had. Cosette says she does not remember another child at the house but Thernadier’s daughters. Then there was that savoyard, and my sister’s children, children I’ve wronged, whose faces, whose  _ names _ I cannot remember. There are so many children I’ve not been able to save, even if they  _ were  _ my own blood.”

“Gervais.” The name fell from Javert’s lips like they had been waiting to escape. “Little Gervais. The forty-sou piece you stole from the savoyard.”

“Gervais,” Valjean repeated, little more than a whisper. “You— how did you know?” 

“You underestimate what lengths I went to find you.” 

“I would never underestimate you,” Valjean scoffed, barely a joke. “I have never underestimated you.”

Javert found the sentiment at once amusing as well as chilling. It spoke of decades of fear. “So your Cosette has a sister?”

Valjean exhaled, sounding hopeless. “It was nearly two decades ago. The girl is very likely dead, and if not, impossible to find.”

Javert thought for a second. “If they are twins, would she not smell of Cosette? Her… blood?” 

Valjean nodded. “But where to start? Even if she had made it to Paris, there is an uncountable amount of people, masked by the smell of pollution…” He looked back down at the paper he had been writing. “Which is why  I'm currently writing an essay about the state of our sewers. I propose we—”

Javert’s eyes snapped to the page, picked it up to scan the words. He hadn’t payed much attention to what it was Valjean had been actually writing as the way he had written it. Now he scanned the words. “The Land Impoverished by the Sea,” Javert read. Chapter one. “ _ ‘Paris casts twenty-five millions yearly into the water. And this without metaphor. How, and in what manner? Day and night. With what object? With no object…’ _ Valjean, what is this?”

“A plan for the cleaning of Paris’ sewers, starting with a scientific evaluation, followed by a historical analysis of past attempts, concluding with a plan for the future.”

Javert allowed the wad of pages to fall back to the table, Valjean hurrying to sort the pages back into order. Javert slumped back into his chair, hand to his forehead. “ _ Valjean _ ,” he said, conscious of the tone in his voice. “You’re a being with superhuman smell. You cannot go to the  _ sewers  _ of Paris to disinfect them.”

“We have plenty of time?” 

“No, you have plenty of time to garden, to learn an instrument, not to clean sewers.”

“But if we implement a sewer system that cleans the sewage, not just carries it into our rivers, perhaps Paris could be a safer place for people like us to live, to walk the streets without the constant stench. Thus, making it easier to find her.”

Javert shook his head. “While admirable, it’s technologically impossible. We should consider searching in a more traditional manner. A paper trail, while incredibly boring, must exist, and can be found far quicker than an entire reworking of the Paris underground.”

“Perhaps for you, but I cannot do what you do. I cannot investigate cases, I cannot find clever routes to solve problems.”

“You are addressing the man who failed to find you after decades of searching.”

“ _ You _ are addressing the man who resorted to breaking into his people’s homes to leave coins when they were too stubborn to accept charity.” 

Javert recognised the exact moment that Valjean realised he had made a mistake. It was the half-second after Javert remembered the coin he had found in his room that night, the night he had refused to take the mayor’s offer of a raise. “I should have known it was you!” Javert exclaimed, “That damned coin haunted my dreams.” Valjean seemed distressed at this, so Javert explained himself. “You cannot believe I simply said to myself ‘how strange, a coin worth a quantifiable amount more than my salary I do not remember owning, on my floor! I must have dropped it!’” 

The look on Valjean’s face said that he very much did expect that to have been the case. “Or, at least, that you might think someone had… donated the coin as thanks for some justice.”

“Oh yes, the town was practically  _ throwing _ its disposable wealth at the  _ loved _ lawmakers.” Javert sat himself back down, calming some of the edge he had felt. When Valjean’s attentions turned back to the pages before him, wiping some imaginary dust from the paper, Javert saw he was fighting a losing battle with Valjean’s sense of justice. That, faced against Javert’s desire not to see Valjean nose deep, back in the sewers that had so recently spat him out, was an image enough for Javert to consider his pride in the matter. His pride, which, until recently, had been much of what made him who he was. 

“Which reminds me… I  had hoped to ask…” Javert’s jaw tightened, averting his gaze to the window. Pride or Valjean’s health and, likely, sanity, doomed to spend the rest of his second-life in the sewers beneath the house. Valjean waited for Javert to be comfortable again, exuding his trademark patience. “That you might…” Javert looked for the words, “...consider. ...Helping me. With a problem.”

“Of course.” Valjean had practically leapt at Javert’s words, having to temper his eagerness in helping Javert in any way. Javert could all but hear the gears in the man’s head spinning, thinking how to treat this sudden request for assistance. “If it is within my power.”

Javert cleared his throat. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that I… have not been paying rent while I have been staying with you.”

Valjean hadn’t noticed. He had had the luxury in that he did not have to pay much mind to such things, and had taken it very much for granted that Javert was lodged in Cosette’s old room. Javert had stayed the night while they had been exchanging stories of their past, and had never quite left. It had suited Valjean just fine, so he had never questioned it when Valjean had quit the Rue de l'Homme-Armé property for the Rue Plumet residence and Javert had followed. “I did not expect you to pay rent,” Valjean said, truthfully.

“I had a feeling you might not,” Javert admitted, “But it is not because I wish to take advantage of your hospitality. You may also have noticed that while I have stayed here, I have not been to the Préfecture de police.”

This, Valjean had noticed, but he had assumed that Javert had been taking a break. He had entertained the idea that Javert was uncomfortable with his past, or that he had been taking time to realign his sense of justice and morality, but he did not wish to put words in Javert’s mouth.

Javert set his hands on the table, having discovered, to his absolute disgust, that he was developing a nervous tick around Valjean. Javert eyed his fingers, willing them not to drum their paranoia for the world to see. “...I cannot enter the police station.”

Valjean frowned. “You’re afraid of confronting your fellows?”

Javert licked his lips, a slight, self-conscious laugh quick on its heels. “My reason is not nearly as psychological as that. I cannot enter the police station because I set up preventative measures, years ago, by making the station impenetrable by vampires. I literally cannot step foot in it.”

Valjean sat, bemused, before breaking into a grin. Of course Javert had managed to find a way to trap himself from entering the one building in Paris he probably thought of as home. He allowed himself a perhaps rather unchristian beat to let himself tease Javert before setting it aside and facing the problem. “I’m not sure what I can do to help you with that.”

“Valjean,” Javert said, “I’m  _ bored _ .” 

“Excuse me?”

Javert clenched his fingers into fists. “I’m bored! I’m bored of your books, of staying in this house, and there is really only so much gardening two men can do in one garden, however many of the homeless you feed with the crops you cultivate.” Javert took a breath. “I’m bored.” 

Valjean gaped, rather openly. Javert was… acting like a child. Or, well, he reasoned, Javert did have a point. An eternity to live in, a couple dozen books to keep them occupied. “Well—” Valjean looked back down at his desk, his study of the sewers longing to be finished. Even as he considered asking Javert to help, he had the mental image of the man shoving the pile of papers into the fire, just out of spite. 

Valjean put his arm over the papers, protecting them. “I assume you’re not asking to be part of my sewer project.” Javert narrowed his eyes. “I was only asking,” Valjean said, defensive. He bound the pages together in a paper folder and placed them in his desk, away from prying pyromaniacs. “Do you have… other hobbies you would like to pursue? I can acquire whatever you would like.”

Javert seemed to find the thought of him having hobbies just as ludicrous as Valjean. Then, eyeing the desk containing the sewers, he wiped his face clear. “Let us investigate Fantine’s child. If it ends in failure, so be it, but...” Recalling Valjean’s words about cleaning the sewers, Javert smiled. “We have plenty of time.” 

-

Javert and Cosette had not spent very much time together. While one was out, the other visited, when that one visited, the other stayed clear. Javert would not say he was avoiding the young lady… only, being able to sense her, hundreds of meters from the house, gave him more than enough time to… reroute. To take the longer path. If he just so happened to return to the house mere minutes after her departure.... well.

Javert and Valjean were beginning their evening routine when they both looked up. Coming their direction was Cosette, accompanied by Marius. Briefly, Javert considered fabricating chores he had forgotten, only to quash such hasty excuses, even he knowing how pitiful they sounded. Javert’s interest was, however, piqued by something unusual: Marius appeared to be being dragged their way, much unlike the leaps and bounds the boy usually favoured.

“I have found that my husband was keeping secrets from me,” Cosette said, not one foot through the door, Marius exuding apologies as he trailed behind her.

Javert glanced at Valjean. Which secret had been revealed, he wondered as Cosette seated herself in Valjean’s parlour. Valjean was a turning a startling shade of grey, and looked very much as if he were about to leap from a nearby window. Always one for precaution, Javert went to stand by said window, leaning against the panes with this arms crossed, barring the man’s escape. Javert, too, believed in the truth being accessible to all. 

“You have always treated me as an uncommonly blind little girl,” Cosette begun. “It was never difficult to imagine how you received your scars.” She tapped the edges of Valjean’s wrists, the man nearly recoiling at her touch as if he could hide them from her, even now. “On the run from the Inspector, with a new alias every time we moved… I too have read novels, Papa.” Javert felt his lips twitch, amused by this girl, a complete different character to the demure, vulnerable lady Valjean often painted her as. 

“If you think I have loved you  _ despite  _ these,” Cosette continued, “You would be wrong.” Valjean looked about ready to faint, but Cosette forged on, regardless. “I have loved you, often,  _ because _ of them.”

This, neither father, husband nor Javert had expected. “Dearest girl—” 

Cosette shushed. Valjean’s mouth closed. 

“To have suffered, to have been through hell…” Cosette swallowed. “It would not have been shocking for you to have become a hardened man. Cold to the harsh world that had hurt you. Yet, despite this all, despite the pain, you have always treated me kindly, and with more patience than I often deserved. At many points, I admit, I was critical of your history, curiosity causing suspicion, my imagination naming far worse crimes than that which you have actually committed, but in such times, it was your scars that reminded me to be thankful. Thankful that you were strong enough to have loved me.”

Javert’s attention flicked back to Valjean to find the man weeping. Understandable, he thought, and expected too. Javert had not believed for a second that the girl would treat Valjean anything but positively after the truth was revealed. He did not move from his perch, content to watch as father buckled under daughter’s words. It was satisfying to watch the man have a taste of his own darned medicine.

“And now, to address the reason I am angry.” Once again, the three men shared a similar sense of surprise.  _ There’s more?  _ Javert thought, briefly. “Marius,” she said, “Is not human.”

Javert watched Valjean watch Marius, not quite dislike on the old man’s face, but something startlingly similar. He turned to Cosette, the girl watching the pair interact too. Her eyes squinted. “You knew,” she accused, eyes widening again with the revelation.

Valjean, taken aback and visibly flustered, turned to Javert for help. Javert, for his part, held his hands up. He wanted no role in this. “Well—”

“And you married me to him, without so much as a warning?”

“But—” Valjean said, “You were in love.”

“I  _ am _ in love,” Cosette said, defensive, her hand flying to Marius’. “And nothing will change this. But you could not have given me some sort of advice before the wedding?”

“Advice?” Valjean echoed, evidently lost. “What advice would I have had to give? My dear, you are living a life quite unlike my own. I have never—” Valjean bit himself off, quite suddenly. “...I had not known love until I met you.” 

Cosette shook her head in the universal sign, Javert thought, of a young girl’s disbelief at her father’s dimwittedness. “I would not have expected love advice from you, Papa! Love is the realm of the heart. I learnt enough of love in the convent.” Cosette’s mouth thinned. “What I wish is that you had given me advice on what it is to be a vampire.”

Javert felt Valjean’s heart skip in time with his own; could tell that both of them were assessing the girl. Badum. Badum. Badum. Still human. Valjean deflated. Javert felt himself relax, though why he did so, he could not have said. 

Cosette frowned at the pair, their matching expressions evidently suspicious for her. She was biting her lip while she thought. Then, a revelation. She seemed more incensed than before as she turned to her father. “You thought you had been hiding it from me!” Cosette said, completely taken aback. Javert could not prevent a laugh, growing wildly fond of this girl.

“Kept what?” Valjean asked, sheepish.

“You think I did not know that you are a vampire too?” At Valjean’s look of blank panic, Cosette’s anger grew further. “You must think me uncommonly stupid!”

“No,” Valjean was quick to say, “I was simply protecting you—” 

Javert was reasonably surprised that the girl did not physically attack her father. 

“My father, the man who showed inhuman bouts of strength. My father who aged not a single day in all the years I have known him. My father, who fed on my uncle to keep healthy. My father…” Cosette trailed off, following Valjean’s worried glance at Javert.

Javert’s beginnings of a smile had disappeared. “‘Fed’?”

Valjean nodded. When the man did not elaborate further, hurt flared in Javert. When it became evident that Valjean was walling himself up, Javert turned to address the man’s daughter.

Cosette gulped. Javert suspected his face at this moment looked rather more like the fearful inspector than it had for a good few months. Cosette averted her own gaze to her father. Even now, even when accusing the man of silence, Cosette would keep her own. Loyalty.

Javert knew Valjean’s family history. Knew there was no uncle likely to have appeared to donate blood. Thus, the pair must have been sought out by a relation of Fantine. An uncle, Javert thought, angry at his past self. Of course, they must have hid with kindly relatives. His eyes flicked between the pair, attempting to decipher any of their wordless conversation.

‘ _ If I had known, I would not have mentioned it _ ,’ Cosette seemed to say through a concoction of guilt and plea. 

‘ _ It is no matter _ ’ Valjean replied, his trademark forgiveness marred only by the slightest tinge of remorse.

As one, the pair turned back to Javert. Though Cosette had dominated the conversation, she now dipped her gaze once she had met Javert’s eye. It was Valjean who Javert concentrated on. ‘ _ Let us discuss this later _ ’, the man’s look said.

Javert nodded, sharply. He did not feel up to the task of navigating their past in front of this girl and her doltish husband. 

“I should not have said anything,” Cosette said into the tense silence, moments later. Though she did not look at Javert, he could sense she was referring to his presence. “I was under the impression that the inspector… knew.” 

Again, silence. Javert considered what the girl was insinuating. That Javert had been part of the conspiracy from the beginning? That she thought Valjean might have spilled everything in their time cohabiting? What, he wondered, and not for the first time, did their cohabitation look like to the girl?

“I thought he had killed you.” Javert, Valjean and Cosette turned, as one, to the until-then silent Marius, his head raised defiantly. “You,” he said, eyes trained on Valjean like a gun, “You let me believe you had killed the Inspector.”

Of  _ course  _ he did. Javert looked to the Heavens, floored by Valjean’s continuing foolishness.

This time, Valjean’s silent plea was sent towards Marius. But, the boy being who he was, could not interpret the man, and only cocked his head, his accusatory glance growing. Eventually, Valjean gulped. “I thought— Monsieur Baron, I thought you and I were to die at the barricade. I did not think I would need to explain the Inspector’s health to you.”

Javert felt a shudder run through him. The very shadow of possibility, that Valjean could have died there, now terrified Javert. 

“So the Inspector knew you, the entire time?” Marius appeared to be following the conspiracy line of thinking. Considering the number of coincidences that held the four of them together, this was not as ridiculous as it might have been.

“I knew him, yes,” Javert said, finally offering Valjean a line of assistance. “Though I was far from his right hand, as you are positing.”

Marius stared at Javert, unblinking, expression neutral. The boy did not, could not scare Javert, but yet he found the moment uncanny. Javert was being judged for the first time since his second birth. Valjean, Cosette, they were quick to forgive, to excuse, to love. The Baron would be Javert’s first jury.

But, even now, Javert’s punishment was held from him. Again, it was Valjean who was to take the blow. 

“You let him live, monsieur,” Marius said, standing to meet Valjean’s eye, head cocked in that way which said he knew his next words would devastate, “But you would let my friends die to do so?”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm attempting to keep myself 2 chapters ahead... hence the ... uneven uploads.... thank you to the kindness so far guys i cry so much

The man’s name was Jacques, and Grantaire had known him since he was a pup. The two others were Pascal and Alexandre, a couple of years younger than Grantaire. Between them was Bahorel, bloody, beaten.

Grantaire gulped. 

...Three dead family members, one live human. Bahorel had killed his former packmates.

“R...” Bahorel’s ridiculous, swaggering persona was dead. Its replacement smelt of desperation and fear. 

-

The two dead boys were dripping cool blood down Grantaire’s back. Some of it was drying, smelting his shirt to his skin. They smelt like sweat, and the onset of rot. 

The pair stopped in the alleyway behind the pub so that Grantaire could empty his stomach. This, it turned out, became a recurring theme as the hours passed, until Grantaire had been retching an empty stomach for at least four or five stops.

His family were going to kill him. They were going to kill Grantaire. He smelt of dead family. He was helping to dispose of dead family. No, they weren’t his family anymore, he had a new family, he had… his family were going to kill him. Where was Musichetta? Where was Éponine? Where was Enjolras? ...His family were going to kill him…

-

Montparnasse had not been gone five minutes before he sauntered back in, all cock and plumage. He was smoking like a boy intending to impress his elders. “Word has it your boy was seen killing 3 men not a couple hours ago. Dragged ‘em halfway ‘cross Paris before my boys lost interest.” 

The information was so much, in so little time, that Feuilly could not comprehend Montparnasse’s words. As such, he fixated on the last statement. “‘Lost interest’?”

“The novelty of seeing one of your lot doing something as ‘terrible’ as murder wore off pretty quick once they clocked he was just another villain. Got plenty of shady characters hauling bodies down side-alleys to last lifetimes, my lot.” Montparnasse spread himself on Jehan’s bed, completely at home and, by his shut eyes, ready for a nap. 

Bahorel— murder— Feuilly felt faint.

-

“Grantaire. ...Grantaire.” When Grantaire came back to consciousness, he was curled into himself, Bahorel above him. “I’m going to take you home. You’ve done enough.”

Grantaire shook his head, desperate but nauseous.  “I cannot leave you alone.”

Bahorel laughed, a lot of misplaced confidence in it. “I can take care of myself.”

“Hence why you came to me,  _ me _ , of all people, for help.” Grantaire wiped his face with his hand, feeling the sweat, tasting blood. His brother’s’ blood. No, Bahorel was his brother, now, not the old pack. Grantaire could feel something tugging at him, from within, like something was trying to escape— 

Bahorel rolled him over, to take a look at his face. Bahorel looked increasingly worried, which did not bode well, he thought vacantly. Then, he wondered at the time. It was magnificently bright in the alleyway, with little but the moon to light their way...

“Grantaire?” Bahorel asked, when Grantaire’s heart ceased beating. Then, Grantaire sat up, pushing Bahorel away, still facing the moon. The full moon. He closed his eyes. He was an idiot. God, he was an idiot—

“Oh,” Bahorel said, looking up himself. “That’s— that’s full, isn’t it. Oh, God.” Grantaire felt Bahorel’s hand clamp around his arm, dragging him up. “R, I don’t wish to seem like I’m defiling your trust in me, but we need help.  _ I need help. _ ”

Help.  _ Help _ . Help could only mean… “No, Bahorel, no, not him, please…”

“He’ll know what to do. He can help us.”

“No, Bahorel, he will not, he will not want to see me, he will— would rather—”

Bahorel reasoned that, being the night of the full moon, the cohorts of those he had killed would not be on the prowl that night. He was placing a lot of hope in this reasoning. He did not have the senses of the creatures of the Musain, but he knew one sniff of the corpses would bely enough information about who had carried them to the alley to be incriminatory, several times over. But, if he were to focus on the bodies, and ignore Grantaire…

Bahorel needed help. Grantaire did not want to be helped.  Bahorel removed a cudgel from his belt, the one Inspector Javert had recommended they carry during an emergency. He hit Grantaire, hard, on the head.

-

They were holding an emergency meeting. Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Feuilly and, when they had located them, Joly and Bossuet. Jehan had joined Montparnasse in gathering further reconnaissance, would act as Montparnasses’s messanger, should any more information be located. 

“--murder,” Enjolras had just echoed. “They are sure?”

“We have found a boy that watched the fight,” Feuilly confirmed. “But, it gets… worse.”

Enjolras bit his thumb, motioning for Feuilly to continue. “He attacked, or was attacked by, we are not sure just yet, three werewolves. They were identified as three from Musichetta’s old pack.”

‘Worse’ was quite the understatement. Their bond with the werewolves was thin, thinner than ever after Enjolras’ outburst at Grantaire. They did not need a human from their group engaged in warfare. 

What to do? It was difficult not to just  _ label  _ the man outright. There were only three humans among them. Joly was attached to Bossuet’s hip, Feuilly was here. Bahorel had killed three werewolves, had been missing for more than a week. 

Joly could be double crossing them. Feuilly could be eavesdropping. Bahorel might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Enjolras closed his eyes, the room overpowering him, every sense battling to tell him something new about the people around him. He just needed to think. Think, think, think…

The door slammed open with a bang. Half the room were on their feet within moments. The assailant, leg still raised from his kick, collapsed forwards caught themself at the last moment, then made the arduous journey inside. 

Enjolras was sure he was not the only one gaping. He could feel the very air shift as the room watched in silence: Grantaire lowered onto a table, wine bottles shoved to the floor by the action, Grantaire not moving, barely breathing, still alive.

“He’s fucking heavy,” Bahorel grunted as he stood, rolling his shoulders. When Bahorel looked up, he evidently panicked, feeling the weight of the assumptions surrounding him. “He’s alive. Shit, yeah, you know that. He— he was turning, and I didn’t know what to do, so I— Hit him.”

Joly was the first to move, stumbling towards the table to check the damage, fingers parting Grantaire’s hair to get a better view of the injury. “With what?” Joly asked, fingers coming away sticky with blood. Bahorel’s already serious expression darkened as he saw the blood. His hand came immediately to his coat— slowing when he noticed the sudden raise of hackles. Slowly, carefully, he parted his coat to reveal his cudgel. He removed it and put it on the desk.

Enjolras felt that sinking feeling again, the one he had felt at Grantaire’s suggestion of Feuilly being a spy. “Bossuet, Courfeyrac.” The two men did not need to be told what to do. Bahorel, too, understood Enjolras’ wordless instructions, holding his hands in surrender to show he was not reaching for a weapon. 

As Combeferre went to help Joly assess Grantaire’s wounds, starting to dress the man’s blow, Bossuet and Courfeyrac frisked Bahorel, putting their found items on a table next to the one that held Grantaire. Though Enjolras was stood next to this table, his focus was on the unconscious man adjacent to them. 

Grantaire smelled. Smelled of alcohol. Tobacco. Blood, body odour, grime, matted fur, like the men who lived on the streets, never washing; like those stray dogs that so often accompanied them. The smell was enough to make Enjolras want to cover his nose, to stop breathing, to leave the room. Enjolras did not make this displeasure known. He breathed, deeply, taking in the smell, making himself nauseous with it, punishing himself with it… This smell, this man, this injury, this was Enjolras’ fault. 

The grip of the smell was enough that Enjolras did not notice Courfeyrac until his hand was on Enjolras’ arm. Enjolras blinked, as if that would clear the fog clouding his brain, before refocusing on the items on the table. Cudgel, police issue. Easy enough to find on the streets. Some money, more than most carried, but less than a week’s cash-in-hand wage. Keys, to Bahorel’s lodging presumably, scraps of paper, nothing of interest on any of them, and a knife. Enjolras picked it up. It was light, fairly unobtrusive. It would not do much damage to either his species or Grantaire’s. A weapon against humans. 

The items concluded that Bahorel was not the spy, but a gang member. Enjolras found himself uncaring. He nodded. “Get Bahorel clean, feed him, talk to him.” Courfeyrac nodded.

“Feuilly?” Courfeyrac asked, under his breath.

Enjolras glanced at the man in question, who was holding the cudgel in his hand, assessing it for something. Enjolras’ eyes flicked to Grantaire. “Keep him busy.” Enjolras knew too well what it was to suspect a person one cared for. Suspicions were heightened purely because one was telling oneself not to be lenient. 

“Bahorel, with me,” Courfeyrac said, directing Bahorel to the back of the room. “Bossuet too. Feuilly, assist Combeferre and Joly with Grantaire. The doctors will need a runner.”

Feuilly looked up, about to object, but then seemed to catch sight of Bahorel, and, slowly, looked back down. Feuilly nodded his understanding.

Bahorel, flanked either side by Bossuet and Courfeyrac, disappeared into the back room, and Enjoras felt the rest of the room calm. He looked about the patrons, those not part of their meeting but involved, and fixed his posture. There was silence as Enjolras walked to the center of them. 

“News of this will surely spread. We need now, more than ever, to continue our rally. Unity. We will solve what occurred tonight, but this was by no means an act of war. I expect all of you to help in defusing the situation. Spread our apologies for those dead. We did not know them, but they were good men. Their losses are felt by us all. Anything we can do to help, we will.” 

Enjolras swallowed. There were utterances of displeasure, and not all of them passive distaste. He kept his posture rigid, meeting the eyes of those making the loudest complaints. “Tonight we help wolves in need. All of you, you here, your friends, anyone not present, gather them, now, and go out to the streets. Find wolves in need. Feed them, keep the humans safe.  _ We work together _ .”

A low growl. Enjolras felt the hairs on the back of his neck stick on end. A shiver, running through him like electricity.  _ Look _ , the animal inside him insisted, while his brain pleaded him to flee.  _ Look, run, look—  _

The growl morphed into a scream, which had Enjolras scrambling to Grantaire’s side, even as those other vampires around him pushed themselves back. Bossuet burst from the back room, probably having been posted guarding the door, by Grantaire’s side in half a second, pinning down one of the man’s waving arms. Enjolras took the other with one of his own, his right hand pushing down on Grantaire’s chest until he could almost feel the ribs beneath his fingers bend… bend…  _ crack,  _ he thought. _ Crack them.  _

Enjolras was pulled back, a violent hand grabbing the neck of his waistcoat and shoving him out of the way. Combeferre, livid, did not meet his eye, pointing Enjolras towards the back. 

Enjolras breathed, hard, feeling his lungs fill almost to explosion, then let it all out in a harsh choke.  _ Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.  _ Enjolras looked up, finding Joly, human, terrified,  _ thud, thud, thud thud thud—  _

“Enjolras,” Combferre said, voice icy, the very hush of his voice a sure sign of his anger. “Don’t go near him,” he heard Combeferre warn Joly as Enjolras passed into the back room. 

-

Courfeyrac was watching the door as Enjolras passed through, eyes level and expressionless. Perhaps it was the millennia they had spent together, but Courfeyrac always managed to echo his partner’s emotions, even with walls between them. 

Bahorel was sat opposite, back to the door, hands lashed to the chair with his cravat.

“His suggestion,” Courfeyrac said, noticing Enjolras’ displeasure. “Just while Bossuet is distracted.”

“To put everyone at ease,” Bahorel said, evidently attempting to sound like he felt any of that calm. “Is he…?” 

Enjolras shrugged, hand coming to cover his mouth. He was shaking, he realised. He was… 

“When was the last time you ate, E?”

Enjolras bit his lip.  _ When? When…? He hadn’t wanted to smell of blood around Grantaire— the wolves in the leadup… Then, they had gone missing, and…  _

“Um,” Bahorel said, his head twisting so he could hold Enjolras in his widening eyes, “Courf, could I, I mean, can you uncuff me? I’m just...” Bahorel went quiet when Enjolras sat, fell, really, in a chair outside of Bahorel’s sight. “ _ Courfeyrac _ .”

Courfeyrac leaned forwards and gave the binding a tight pull, the cravat coming away easily in his hand. He gave it back to Bahorel, who got to work tying it, with admittedly shaky fingers, back around his collar.

Once he had done this, Bahorel turned his chair around so that he could face Enjolras, wary, but calmer now, more like himself. His heartbeat remained steady, if slightly elevated, blood shushing through his veins. 

“He’s looking at me like I’m meat,” Bahorel whispered, smile becoming more forced. 

“He’s listening to your blood.”

Bahorel gulped. “Right.” He licked his lips. “Can you make him stop?” 

“You were in a fight, Bahorel. You smell like food.”

“Food. Right.”

“He’s hungry. I’ll have to get someone to visit the bank.” 

This was the final blow to Bahorel’s smile. His leg, previously jittering, stilled. “Right.” 

Bahorel undid his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves, and offered his arm to Courfeyrac. 

“Bahorel…”

“I’ve fucked up, Courfeyrac. I’m not saying this is payment for that, I’m not sure anyone will accept that, ‘specially me, but we don’t need him like that, now.”

From the front, a muffled scream, the last notes turning into a flickering howl. Enjolras, slouched in his seat, perked up, ears turned to the noise like a dog after a rat. 

“I for one, am not going to sit in the same bar as him while you go search for a willing prostitute. Not when he looks like a damned vulture.”

The pair watched as Enjolras stood, focus intent on the sounds from the next room. His hair, usually so neat, his clothing, usually so unruffled, his expression, usually so considering… 

“Okay. Enjolras,” Courfeyrac beckoned, taking a small, concealed blade from an inside pocket. He took Bahorel’s proffered arm, weighing it as if a slab of meat to be cut into portions. 

“This won’t hurt.”

Bahorel scoffed, bracing himself as the knife broke skin. It was strange, Bahorel thought as Enjolras kneeled between his legs. Having a man you knew as a companion, a colleague, kneel like this. Bahorel was no stranger to the position, but to have unfamiliar, unwanted lips on his arm… 

Enjolras was lucid after barely half a minute, falling back, away from Bahorel as soon as was possible. Bahorel, evading Enjolras’ eye, watched as the excess saliva coated the wound, the skin stitching together first pink, then darkening until it was as dark as the rest of him. 

“Well,” Courfeyrac said, “Let us all be thankful that we caught that sooner, rather than later. Enjolras,” he said, as if a parent to his child, “What do you say?” 

Enjolras, still on the floor, hand to his mouth, was silent for a long moment. Then, his eyes flicked to Bahorel. “Thank you.”

“Jesus,” Bahorel said, feeling sick. “‘’Thank you’? God, this is… this is messed up, C.”

A knock on the door. “Yeah,” Courfeyrac said, presumably answering both Bahorel and those that now filed in.

Joly, Feuilly trailing him. Feuilly’s eyes, tracking the floor, caught Enjolras, splayed on the floor, blood on his lips. Rose, confused, to Bahorel, cradling his now-healed arm. The two and two were not hard to add. His anger was palpable. 

“You were supposed to be interrogating him, not bleeding him!”

“I offered.”

Feuilly’s disgust, aimed at Enjolras, transferred in full force to Bahorel. Wordless, lip-curled disgust. Bahorel retracted into himself, as if a snail attempting to fit back into its shell. Head dipped, shoulders bent, eyes down.

Joly, watching this and looking near to tears, took a deep breath. “We have to move Grantaire. Combeferre administered a sleeping draught, but it shan’t last much longer, with the state he’s in. Feuilly and I just came,” he said, putting his hand on Feuilly’s arm and pulling him back behind him, “To inform you of this.”

Courfeyrac nodded, flicking his fingers in a ‘go’ motion. 

Joly nodded, half bow, as if excusing himself from the presence of a king, then pulled at the sleeve of Feuilly’s arm.

“Where?” Joly, Feuilly, Courfeyrac and Bahorel turned to the wretched creature on the floor. “Where are you taking him?”

Joly deferred to Courfeyrac with a quick, wordless plea. “You’re staying here, Enjolras. We need you here.”

Enjolras shook his head, standing. “No, I have to be there. I have to go with him.”

“I don’t think…” Joly started, before once again indicating that Courfeyrac should continue.

“That’s not happening, Enjolras. The last thing we need is the two of you at one another’s throats.”

“No, I—” Enjolras shuddered, then stood, turning to Feuilly, supplicating him, hands on the man’s shoulders. Feuilly flinched, but met the man’s eyes with cold, visible fear. “Feuilly. Please. I cannot stand to be away from him. I will not do so again.”

“He is delirious,” Joly said from Feuilly’s left. “Displaying unnatural behaviour.”

“Please, Feuilly. You understand.  _ Please. _ ”


End file.
